Homeplace

1. He uses personal narrative as well as stories he has heard about people he knows. He also uses outside information from other people. He defines being settled as living in an idea, not necessarily living in one sole place. Being placed is living in one place for the time being, and being an inhabitant is being someone who has lived in one place for his or her entire lives. He says it is stubbornness or that they simply know the place they live well enough to not wish to move.

2. Sander’s tone is very matter of fact, but at times he is also very frustrated. Such as when he talks about the earth movers and chain saws. I would instruct the reader to use a questioning tone of voice, so as to wonder at the though of staying put. I find Sander’s tone of voice more engaging. It is less restricted and more open to the idea of many different things.

Little Store

1. She reminisces by telling the story of all the actions that took place before she made it to the grocery store and then tells us about all the things that would happen within the store. The moments she recounts express how important the store is to her childhood and how much it effected her life. The effect is showing us that there was more to the store then just the store, it was the adventure of going to the store and what it meant to her as a child. She appeals to sight and taste. She uses a chld-like diction. She describes thing in a child-like manner, such as “the Monkey Man” or “tiddly-winks”.

2. He reveals that he is tired and means business. His stance reveals that he seems to be impatient, you can imagine him tapping his fingers against the watermelon in an impatient manner. The muscles in his eyebrows are tightened as if he is concentrating on something. The harsh lighting gives him a harsh look, so it help influence the feeling of “business”.

Dispossessed

1. He defines working class as those that get paid by the hour. Middle class Americans portray the working class. These representations lack the truth of how these people live at home because someone in the middle class would not understand what it is like to live in the working class. The virtue of the working class is that race and sexuality are not important, the importance is in bettering yourself. The vice being in the working class is that you are instantly put into the same class as those that don’t have homes at all. He says that we should distinguish from working class, working poor, and working family because they all mean different things. For example, working family could mean a doctor working to get the money to get his kid to go to Harvard, but it also means the cashier who works hard to pay for medicine. It is wholly unfair to the working class.

2. The audience he is writing for is middle class America. He is trying to get those in the middle class to realize those that are invisible, aka the working class. A passage that proves this is the one talking about how the middle class is the class that shows the life of the working class, but it does not show the full story because they simply do not know what living in the working class is like. If this were changed or omitted, it would not be targeting those that are in the middle class to think more about the idea of the working class.

River Response

I really didn’t understand this piece of literature too well. For me it was a bit confusing when I tried to follow it, as though it was a page ripped out of a book. However, it does have signs of good writing in it. I found the relationship between the two sisters was very peculiar and a bit strange. I didn’t really know what to take out of it, but in many ways I can relate to it. There are times when I find myself in such dramatic situations with other members of my family and often times they scare me. I suppose the confused feeling that the piece gave off helps to amplify that. I can tell that the relationships between each family member are a little cut off, at least from the information given. Maybe cut off is a bit too harsh; perhaps distant is a better word. It sounds a lot like family gossip to begin with and it ends in a very heart-wrenching story about her sister. The way she went into this story was a bit abrupt for my taste, but in all it was a pleasant read.

Edward Hopper Seeing 1&2

1. Hopper directs my attention towards the sky, the ground, the roof of the house, the porch, the rails of the railroad, and the ground. The details I noticed about the house were how it’s so lonely and solemn. In the picture I noticed the windows, for some reason I was really drawn to them. I noticed it’s structure is very statute, it almost reminds me of a statue of a person, unmoving. It almost blends in with the sky and it heavily contrasts with the railroad. My eyes tend to linger on the windows, as I said before, when I look at the painting. Each aspect of the painting reinforces the idea of loneliness by giving off a very empty feeling.

2. Hirsch focuses on the rooftop and the porch. He creates the feeling that the house is lonely. His use of repetition helps speak through the idea of the house being lonely. It gives us a sense of the same. The house doesn’t see much change, so the poem doesn’t change in it’s structure and word use. Hirsch’s poem helps amplify the idea of loneliness I get from the painting. Before reading the poem, I simply saw the painting as bland and uninteresting but afterwards it turned it into a sense of loneliness.

Growing Up Lion

I found this essay to be interesting, but at the same time it was a bit of a cliché to me. It was about the same old story about falling into a stereotype without truly wanting to. But for whatever reason, it happens. If it wasn’t a story I have heard a dozen times before I am sure I would find it intriguing or sad, but I have heard it several times told several different ways. I will say, though, that this time it was told a little better then most of the other stories I have heard. As usual, there are some grammatical errors in it or it is simply worded strangely, but other then that it is written well.

Suicide Poets Response

“Suicide Poets” by Ryan Buell was a somewhat depressing read but intriguing all the same. I found myself very interested in the idea of how poets that have committed suicide throughout the years have become myths that are a part of history. Thinking on this, I have come to realize this is true. I found it to be a very well written essay that links a personal story to a worldly topic. Buell’s description of the poet Madeline Foster is a cryptic, dark read. But, it gets his point across rather strongly. However, I don’t feel that Buell truly does what he wants in this essay until the very last paragraph, which could have been much stronger if he went in to more detail about it. Other then that, it was a pleasant, interesting read that left me thinking a lot. So in the end, I would say this essay was very successful.

Writer's Block Reflection

Writer’s Block was an interesting reflection on Amy Sobotta’s life. It was a fun read and an intriguing read as thing of its nature usually are. I found myself cringing at a number of grammatical errors, and a few areas of the work simply did not make sense, but it was more or less the simple ramblings of a college student with a few main points to round it out. I found it interesting because although it had a good amount of grammatical errors, you could still tell it came from deep inside the writer. That is the kind of “stuff” I notice I get in to when I write my best poems, short stories, or narratives, so it is nice to see there are others who can rely on their rambling minds to write a good story. In fact, I will rephrase that. It is good to know that there are others who are willing to sit down and write out what they are thinking when it comes to their life in general and are willing to let it be printed. I know it’s a bit of a stretch for some people to successfully write down their thoughts and find a way to make sense of them, but honestly, anyone could have written a narrative just as good as this if they tried. I know I have. It’s only a matter of putting yourself in that situation where you are sitting at a desk and are deep in thought, just make sure you have a pencil with you.

Response to Pearl Jam Song

I found it very moving. It seemed to be about a man who had hit rock bottom then found salvation through something (never specified). The then apparently tried to help others find their way out of despair but was met by ridicule. But, according to the song, that wasn’t enough to keep him from trying. It is a very interesting song and very emotional when you listen to it. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

The Uncommon Life of Common Objects Seeing #1

1. She elaborates on how human nature and impulse is what gives ordinary objects their value. Along with this, if it is something from years before such as an antique, it holds a different value. She also briefly covers how objects communicate different things for everyone and this can add or take away from their value to certain people. Also, the way other people react to certain objects can change the value of that object for you.

The point she makes that I find most convincing is when she discusses how it is human nature to give value to ordinary objects. This is convincing to me because I believe she is correct in this respect. Our emotions play a huge role in the way we see things and this is no different to when we are holding something that belongs to a deceased relative or the shoes you wore when you won an important race.

I’d say all of the things she talked about resonated with my experience. I feel I have experiences the wonder of all of these things. I own a fair number of antiques myself that intrigue me simply because of their role in history, as well as items I have kept that have sentimental value to me because of what they remind me of, or, simply, objects that I own because they mean certain things to me.

One thing I believe Busch omitted was the simple childish wonder one can have when looking upon something that is alien to them. I remember as a child I would keep rocks that were colored differently, or grew interesting crystals on them. I kept these things not because they had any sentimental value to me but simply because I did not understand their nature so I wanted to hold on to them.

p. 94 Seeing 1&2

1. When I look at this image, the first thing I see is the poster of Jet Li. However, the object that draws my attention is the projected image of the boy on the wall in the top right corner. What I noticed about each object is that they are all very vibrantly colored, all of them except the projected image of the boy. What I can infer about this boy is that he enjoys basketball, baseball, riding his bike, he has a lot of shoes, he likes Jet Li movies, he is messy, he likes Captain America, and family is important to him. The generalization I can make about Osorio’s style is that he likes taking pictures of the ordinary in different people’s lives, specifically their bedrooms.

2. Osorio has been quite unsuccessful, I think. Because personally, my room never looked like this for a few reasons. I never had a mirror ground in my room, I never had so many posters or cards of any kind, let alone I would never glue my cards to my wall, and I never had a projector in my room. I would say the parts of the room that are based on fiction would be the mirrors on the ground as well as the projector and the numerous golden fists all around the room. I believe this is fiction because no boy, unless the boy was form a wealthy family, would ever have these things in their room. The criteria I would use to help someone differentiate form fact and fiction would be by looking at the things that are the most expensive in the room, and those things would most likely be fiction.

"A Matter of Scale" Seeing 1&2

1. In a world where everything measures bigger or small then ourselves, Cole finds that at different scales, whether you are bigger or smaller, things act differently. To Cole, this makes it magically seductive.

Cole's essay showed me how to compare things that I had learned previously in my science classes to myself if I were bigger or larger. I found it very interesting when talking about being the size of an ant or a flea, everything made sense to me I just had not thought of it in that way before.

I wouldn't say any of the new facts will change the way I think, but the perspectives offered will. I already knew that a fly or a number of other insects stick to water through learning about it in school, and before that on my own observations. The newest facts to me were not the actual facts offered, but the way they were presented. So they will not change the way I think, but the way the facts were presented will.

2. I think she ended her essay with a quote because it helps support her argument. It would have changed because it would have only partly been coming from Schrodinger and therefore not as reliable as being his own words as the entire quote.

If she had simply footnoted it, it wouldn't have been as prominent that the quote was coming from another author and therefore less valuable to the reader.

Cole uses a number of different techniques to bring other authors perspectives into her essay for a few reasons. One is because using the same quoting technique over and over becomes dry and boring. It doesn't flow as well and is less creative. Another is because wherever she uses the different quoting techniques that is where the technique fits best in comparison to the paragraph the quote was put in. It helps the essay flow.

Seeing 1 & 2

1. How would you describe Peter Menzel’s photographic portraits of ordinary people’s food in different parts of the world to someone who has not seen them?

Peter Menzel’s photographic portraits depict numerous different settings in which people live today simply by showing us the different types of foods people eat in different parts of the world. It also shows us just how poor some countries are compared to some of the richer areas of the world.

What specific words and phrases would you use to characterize what you see in the photographs?

Contrast and ironic.

Which details- for example, textures, colors, objects, shapes, and setting –stand out the most to you?

The colorful vegetables and fruits in the Guatemala picture stand out the most to me because they seem to have the most abundant amount of naturally grown food that has not been processed, which is what makes it more colorful.

Choose one of Menzel’s photographs. What reasonable inferences can you draw from the observations you have made about this photograph?

The pictures of the food from Chad allow me to infer that the country is in a state of poverty because of the substantially large difference in the amount of food they have compared to the other countries.

What story does the photograph suggest to you?

It suggests that Chad is a third world country that has seen many hardships, possibly the cause of natural disasters, isolation, or outside forces continuously changing the government of the country as they take over.

In what specific ways is your understanding and appreciation of each photograph enhanced by Faith D’Aluisio’s accompanying summary?

It gives me a broader understanding of where these pictures are coming from and what they mean, allowing me to understand and appreciate the pictures much more.

2. Choose two of Menzel’s photographs, and compare and contrast your observations about each and the inferences you draw from these observations.

The United States picture and the Guatemala picture are common in that they both are very abundant in the amount of food they have. However, they are extremely different in many ways. For one, in the Guatemala picture you see many more fruits and vegetables while in the American picture you see more meat. In the American picture, the majority of the foods are processed whereas in Guatemala they seem to all be home grown. What I can infer from this is that Guatemala has a much more healthy, natural diet then America because of the lack of processed food they have, however America has access to a wider base of foods, which allows them to get more meats and sweets then Guatemala.

How do different foods represent a “full plate” in these photographs?

In Guatemala, the majority of their food consists of fruits and vegetables with very little meats and other things, whereas in America a full plate consists of majority of meat and very little fruits and vegetables.

By highlighting different physical setting and sociocultural contexts? Different economic conditions? In what specific ways are the scenes and contexts similar?

They are similar in that although the diets are vastly different, they still have an abundant amount of resources and food.

In which instance do you find D’Aluisio’s text more informative and insightful?

I find it most informative when it tells me what everything costs in comparison to the other countries, as well as how much money is spent on different types of foods. It gives us an insight as to how much each country spends on average for an every day plate of food in the different countries as well as which food group is relied most heavily on for sustenance in different countries.