Week 10

What is to give light must endure burning. – Victor Frankl

Today's classwork is to be an essay on the recent events in Japan.  You will have time to read through the week's news reports on the quake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis before putting together an essay on last Friday's catastrophic events.  The essay is to be done in class.  The description is here reproduced for you, from handouts available in class.

ENC1101 Week 10:  On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 earthquake and a tsunami wave devastated areas in northeastern Japan.  Recent estimates put the death toll at 4,225, with another 8194 people missing, and financial losses between 35 and 200 billion.  But the unfolding crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station is most critical, for a meltdown of the plant’s reactors may be unavoidable unless electricity is restored to the plant’s cooling system.  A meltdown would unleash lethal amounts of radiation into the surrounding environment.

Directions:  In an essay of 500 words, describe reports and images of the disaster and some of the most important issues raised by the events.  Not surprisingly, the event has renewed debate here in the U.S. and abroad about the safety of nuclear power.  Use at least three separate news sources in creating the essay.  Provide in text article titles, dates, and place of publication to document source information.  Include at least three quotations in direct support of your claims.  Title your essay and double space the lines.

 ..........................................................................

Final Project Reminder:  Next week the final draft of your short research project (1000 words with a documented source list, i.e. a "Work Cited" list) is due.  This essay should address some subject about which you can make an arguable claim or assert an opinion supported by your research.  You should have a least three secondary sources (published articles or book material) and, if you like, primary sources such as your personal experience, documentary photographs available on the web or elsewhere, eye-witness accounts, etcetera.  You should provide clear summary of context and important details, and direct quotation of experts or authorities whose reports of fact and opinion matter to your argument.  Title and double space the essay.









week 9

  

                                                       

        The groves were God's first temples.  ~William Cullen Bryant, "A Forest Hymn"

Good morning, class.  Hope you are well!

Today we continue putting together the short research assignment.  Last week's work, a roundup of new stories, approximates the kind of sorting and summary you do when you are gathering background sources for a research study.  You must be able to read through and then summarize concisely an author's main point, key support and detail, strength of evidence, interest factors, and determine whether a particular source has anything of real merit to contribute to your research.

Choose your research source materials carefully.  Sources should provide key information, context, illustrations, various perspectives, and counter- arguments or evidence.  The following source criteria will help you pull together comprehensive source material on your subject.

·                     1)   context and background material on the research subject

·           2)  explanations of key concepts

·           3)  examples or illustrations of claims

·           4)  authority for the claims you are making

·           5)  clear evidence to support your claims

·           6) counter-examples or evidence that your argument must take into account

Choose sources that address your research focus.  If a source does not have anything particularly useful to add to your piece, look for another. Consider the following questions as you sort through potential source material:

·                     How does this material address your research question?

·                     In what ways does it provide support for your claims or ideas?

·                     Does this source provide quotable support?

·                    Does the source provide counterarguments that your audience may require you to acknowledge and       answer?

Check the currency of your sources.  When was it published?  Is the information contained or the perspective held still valid?  Is the author or source a respected one or one whose legitimacy is clear?  How many cross-references or links to other authorities or source documents does the source contain?  Can you cross-check the accuracy of the claims made in the source?

Analyze the author’s stance as a means of understanding his or her potential biases or blind spots as regards the subject.  What informs the author’s tone and perspective:  respect for scientific study? a desire to advocate or oppose a particular position?  seriousness of purpose and desire to clarify facts and ideas, or angry, polarizing refutations of other perspectives, including perhaps personal attacks not relevant to the questions?

Assess the author’s argument and evidence, in so far as possible, by cross-checking references and sources relied upon or ignored in the source. 

·               What is the author’s main point?

·               How much and what kind of evidence supports his claims?

·                How persuasive is the evidence?

·                Does he offer or address counter-arguments or evidence?

·                Do you find any questionable logic or biases that may be skewing the argument?

You will need to know the point you want to make in the essay and to be able to frame it up front in opening paragraphs.  The body of the essay should develop context, evidence, examples, and expert  opinion and claims.  The conclusion should underscore the importance of the subject and the perspective on it you have attempted to create.  The essay title should be specific and engaging, and the works cited page accurate in reflecting the sources used directly in text, arranged alphabetically for ease of access.

Week 8

Who, being loved, is poor?
                     –Oscar Wilde



Good morning.  I hope you are well and getting on in school.  I'll be looking for work from you all today, and to discuss the short research assignment due week 10.

To review, you must explore an idea in this 1000-word length essay and put across a claim, your thesis, supported or made persuasive, made credible, by virtue of the accompanying facts, expert opinion, testimonials, logical inquiry, and emotional appeals to the reader's values.

   Our ideas are rooted in traditional areas of study reflecting the history of human thought, values, attitudes, and tastes, and conduct.  These study areas include philosophy, religion, nature, aesthetics, science, ethics, education, etcetera.  Our most closely held beliefs and attitudes reflect very often our unexamined ideas about the nature of love, faith, trust, loss, betrayal, goodness and evil, freedom, sanctity, the very meaning of life.  Whether we focus on Washington and the shenanigans that make the nightly news, bioengineering, Facebook, legal injustices, or the most recent individual or "hero" making  a positive difference in the world, our beliefs, associated ideas, and feelings define us as human beings.  In choosing a research topic you will tap into some subject about which you feel strongly and have clear enough knowledge to put across a cogent argument or position, as supported also by fact and opinion gathered from your reading of available literature.


We will start the morning with a free writing and then on to a roundup of news items, with some documentation included, to help you clarify and focus on the short research work.


Roundup Assignment (#6):  In 400-500 words, introduce by title and article three or four articles published in today's New York Times.  Summarize each and provide commentary and an overarching thematic link between the articles you have chosen.  This is an informal piece in which you can simply discuss some of the most interesting headlines, as you see it, and why they interest you.  Include an alphabetical listing of the works discussed, in the MLA format displayed at the OWL writing site (the link is here, at this blog's link list).

Week 6

Big Cypress National Preserve

Good morning.  I hope you are feeling well, happy, and eager to get on with things. 

Today we have several things to do. We will review last week's field work assignment and the means used to develop your particular point(s).   We will also look at an article for the purposes of learning to summarize textual material. Finally, I will have you write a summary in class including the MLA formatted citation.  This summary is your midterm assignment.


Important Reminder:  Next week we have a class holiday, so you must work on your own time to begin the 1000-word essay due in the last weeks of class.  Find a subject of current interest about which you can locate sufficient reliable and timely sources, primary and secondary, to put together an interesting, informative essay addressing a specific point.   You may know what you want to write about already.  I suggest you become as well informed as you can on the subject and keep copies of the materials that speak to the subject and particular issue you will address.  You will be required to cite and document key sources, and you must be able to provide readers clear bibliographic information for each source directly used (a minimum of three is required for this assignment).

Organizational Modes:  There are modes of developing and arranging information, and we have looked at three thus far: narration, description, and examples or illustration.  Several other commonly used means include definition, process analysis, cause and effect analysis, and comparison/contrast.  

     The process mode of organization is used when explaining how a thing happens or is done or made.  It includes description of the steps, stages, or procedures involved in any natural occurrence or phenomenon, or in any that involve human endeavor.  Such writing addresses the question how?  For example, how do bees find their way to the hive, how does photosynthesis work, how does one change a tire on a steeply ascending road, make a cheesecake or keep houseplants alive and happy? 

     We all, to some degree, understand how things proceed, and can describe the procedures by which things get done or made. We have followed directions and read instructions from a young age and we have learned how to do a thing or two ourselves; in fact, there are certain skills we could actually teach: how to saddle a horse, how to sweep a floor, build a boat or house, sew a hem, design an advertisement, paint with oil colors.  There are certain life experiences we could coach others through; for example, we have all experienced pain, sadness, and loss and so have learned a thing or two about healing, happiness, getting along, starting over.  The stages or steps involved in bettering our health, our outlook, our lives in general always involve a specific method, a means, a process. 

Examples:  

One holds the [surgical] knife as one holds the bow of a cello or a tulip–by the stem. Not palmed nor gripped nor grasped, but lightly, with the tips of the fingers. The knife is not for pressing. It is for drawing across the field of skin. Like a slender fish, it waits, at the ready, then, go! It darts, followed by a fine wake of red. The flesh parts, falling away to yellow globules of fat. Even now, after so many times, I still marvel at its power–cold, gleaming, silent. More, I am still struck with a kind of dread that it is I in whose hand the blade travels, that my hand is its vehicle, that yet again this terrible steel-bellied thing and I have conspired for a most unnatural purpose, the laying open of the body of a human being.

from "The Knife," by Richard Seltzer

Wear loose and comfortable clothing when working out. Because a warmed muscle is believed to be more flexible and pliant, you will often see people wearing sweat suits and woolen socks. You should also be sure to position yourself as comfortably as possible to reduce the tension and make the stretching more enjoyable.                 –from The Science of Stretching, by Michael Alter

When a farmer calls in a cheetah capture, it is CCF's job to retrieve the animal from a field trap, gather biological information, and then relocate or release it. Normally the work is done in the field and not in a farmer's kitchen. Until last night, there had not been a call in a month–proof that that farmers are learning to co-exist with cheetahs rather than to shoot first and ask questions later.

from "Blur: Cheetahs. Ranchers. Hope.," by Susan Zimmerman

For centuries, it was assumed that honey bees simply visited flowers and collected the honey ready-made, bringing it back to the hive and storing it there. The truth of the matter is that honey making is an elaborate and complicated process. The first step is the collection of floral nectar from the gullets of colorful and fragrant blossoms. Floral nectar starts out as sugar water enriched with a few amino acids, proteins, lipids, phenolics, and other chemicals. While it sits in floral ponds, waiting to be sampled by pollinators, the nectar takes on the aroma of the flowers that produced it. Though the scent of the nectar itself is faint, the aromas are intensified once it is concentrated into honey. Excess water is driven off and the complex volatile oils and other chemicals from the flower are magnified, becoming part of the honey and adding to its appeal. Single-source honeys reveal their characteristic aromas best at room temperature, especially when drizzled across a warm piece of toast.

                  —from Secrets of the Bee

     Cause and effect mode sets out to explore the probable reasons why certain events, actions, or manifestations occur or have occurred, and the effects or consequences of these happenings.  We may explore why we behave in a certain way or the effects of certain kinds of behavior on ourselves and others.  We may explore the sources of our satisfactions, for instance, as causes.  We may look at all manner of natural and social phenomena whose causes or effects interest us.  Why are flowers brightly colored?  Why do birds sing?  Why do young animals play?  Why do humans make war?  What effects do our lifestyle choices have on our environment? And what effects have the  decisions of policy makers (who decide whether, for instance, gay and lesbian couples should be allowed to marry) and powerful corporations (whose industry practices may harm or hurt us)?   Bear in mind, a short paper should be limited to either cause or effect, rather than both.  

Examples:         

There are few things humans are more dedicated to than unhappiness.  Had we been placed on earth by a malign creator for the exclusive purpose of suffering, we would have good reason to congratulate ourselves on our enthusiastic response to the task.  Reasons to be inconsolable abound:  the frailty of our bodies, the fickleness of love, the insincerities of social life, the compromises of friendship, the deadening effects of habit.  In the face of such persistent ills, we might naturally expect that no event would be awaited with greater anticipation than the moment of our own extinction.

                             —Alain De Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life

    

      The fundamental pathology of Alzheimer's disease is the progressive degeneration and loss of vast numbers of nerve cells in those portions of the brain's cortex that are associated with the so-called higher functions, such as memory, learning, and judgment.  The severity and nature of the patient's dementia at any given time are proportional to the number and location of cells that have been affected.  The decrease in in nerve-cell population is in itself sufficient to explain the memory loss and other cognitive disabilities, but there is another factor that seems to play a role as well–namely, a marked decrease in acetylcholine, the chemical used by these cells to transmit messages.

                — Sherwin B. Nuland, How We Die

     Contemplating our food for a few seconds before eating and eating in mindfulness can bring us much happiness.  In our practice centers, we use the Five Contemplations as a way of reminding ourselves where our food comes from and its purpose.

      The first contemplation is being aware that our food comes directly from the earth and the sky.   It is a gift of the earth and the sky, and also of the people who prepared it.  The second contemplation is about being worthy of the food we eat.  The way to be worthy of our food is to eat mindfully—to be aware of its presence and thankful for having it.  We cannot allow ourselves to get lost in our worries, fears, or anger over the past or the future.  We are there for the food because the food is there for us; it is only fair.  Eat in mindfulness, and you will be worthy of the earth and the sky.

     The third contemplation is about becoming aware of our negative tendencies and not allowing them to carry us away.  We need to learn how to eat in moderation, to eat the right amount of food.  The bowl that is used by a monk or a nun is referred to as the "instrument of appropriate measure."  It is very important not to overeat.  If you eat slowly and chew very carefully, you will get plenty of of nutrition.  The right amount of food is the amount that helps us to stay healthy.

     The fourth contemplation is about the quality of our food.  We are determined to ingest only food that has no toxins for our body and our consciousness, food that keeps us healthy and nourishes our compassion.  This is mindful eating.  The Buddha said that if you eat in such a way that compassion is destroyed in you, it is like eating the flesh of your children.  So practice eating in such a way that you can keep compassion alive in you.

    The fifth contemplation is being aware that we receive food in order to realize something.  Our lives should have meaning and that meaning is to help people suffer less, and help them to touch the joys of life.  When we have compassion in our hearts and know that we are able to help a person suffer less, life begins to have more meaning.  This is very important food for us and can bring us a lot of joy.  A single person is capable of helping may living beings.  And it is something we can do anywhere.

                                        —Thich Nhat Hanh, Happiness

Midterm:  Summarize in 300 words "The Food Bomb," by Barry Lando, posted at Truthdig.com.  Use a single paragraph, third person point of view (no use of "I" or first person), and provide three direct quotations in support.  Include the title, author, place and date of publication. You will introduce the essay or article by title and author and post date in a sentence that also leads into the subject matter. To summarize means to restate in condensed form the original contents. The length of a summary varies. For our purposes, between 250-300 words is sufficient. We'll go over the article together to make sure we understand what it says, and then proceed to restate in short form and in our own words the main ideas of the article. Analyze the article in terms of its major idea and supporting points and include these, as well as how the author starts develops, and finishes the piece. I don't want you to respond with an opinion in this exercise; just the facts, mam, as they say. Don't use "I" at all. Use third person: In an article appearing in the LATimes titled . . . David Sarno reports that . . . . In this way, briefly describe what the article has to say.  

 The following lead-in may serve as a model for getting started:  

     In “The Food Bomb,” by Barry Lando, published Feb.1, 2011, at Truthdig.com, he explores the food crisis that is contributing to social and political unrest in many parts of the world.   According to the author, “The world will need 70 percent more food in 2050 than it produced in 2000.”  However, there has been no great investment in agriculture and “resources are plummeting.” 

Below the summary, include in MLA format the work cited information for the source article.  MLA Formatting and Style guidelines can be found at the OWL online writing lab homepage, the link to which is on this website's list of links.   The material you will need to look at is indexed under Electronic Sources.

Week 4

 For the warrior, there is no "better" or "worse"; everyone has the necessary gifts for his particular path.–Paul Coelho




















Good morning.  Hope you are well.  Today we will continue work on the short research paper, and we will review last week's autobiographical assignments with an eye to strengthening the essay's coherence and thematic resonance.  


Next week we will be meeting at the Broward County Main Library, situated just one block north of the Art Museum of Ft.Lauderdale.  We will meet at 10 a.m. on the 2nd floor of the library, and from there walk to the museum for the Tom Wesselman exhibit.  The assignment will be a report, an eye-witness account and short report of an event (the exhibit) and the significance of the event displayed from some particular angle that you establish.  Remember, it is not enough to offer a collection of observations or details;  an essay is not a neutral study but one that assays to characterize the subject.  We will discuss in class the range of possible perspectives your individual essays may take.  

Week 3

Good afternoon. I hope you are doing well. Today we will review the short research essay, the nature of arguments, and the conventions of integrating primary and secondary sources. You should have a fairly solid sense of the informative essay by the end of the period. It will be due week 4.  The following week, week 5, we will be meeting at the Art Museum of Ft. Lauderdale to review the Tom Wesselman exhibit. You should sign a release form today or next week in class, if you plan to attend.

The goal of argument, most often, is to convince others that they should change their minds about some issue. Barack Obama, in trying to pass health care reform, sought to convince Congress and the American people that health care reform was in the best interests of citizens and the nation. In his speeches on the issue he compared numbers, best estimates of current and future costs under the current system, to the savings and proposed benefits of reform measures; he cited examples of citizens neglected or underserved by the current system and the kinds of coverage that would be available after reform. He argued that reform, for a number of sound reasons, economic and ethical, is necessary to the health of the nation. To “win” he had to convince others by providing reasons so compelling they agreed with his position.

Yet another goal of argument is to decide or explore rather than to convince others of the rightness of a position. Before making an informed decision or taking a position, we need an adequate acquaintance with a subject or issue and the various perspectives in which it can be seen. Writing that presents information and perspectives to help people to understand an issue, without presuming to have answers, or any easy ones, is another goal of argument. Looking at the facts, asking questions, comparing perspectives, the writer prepares us to see the dimensions of a given problem or issue.

 The thesis of an argument should be an arguable claim, one that tries to convince readers of something or perhaps to do something, or explore a topic so that readers are in a position to make an informed decision. The thesis may address an issue that has no ready or absolute answer, not one readily verified by resort to factual report, but one that readers might realistically take different perspectives on.

Argument or fact?

*Water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit.

* Van Gogh’s work is that of a madman.

* Plastic bags are polluting the seas.

*Consumers must reduce their carbon footprint.

*The average temperature of the earth has risen over the last century.

*Glaciers are melting at a rate unprecedented in modern times.

Build your essay around an arguable claim. Support it with reference to your readings, first-person experience, a factual basis and logical analysis. Consider the following thesis: The use of plastics worldwide must come under closer scrutiny and regulation.

Readers now want to know why, and how the issue affects them and, indeed, if there is something they might do to help resolve the issue. Your sources provide background information, demonstrate your knowledge of the topic, provide authoritative support and perspective, and show the range of perspectives possible, in fairness to differing opinions.

Select material for quotation on the following bases:

1) 1 the wording is particularly memorable, to the point, and not easily paraphrased

2) it expresses an author’s or expert’s direct opinion that you want to emphasize

3) it provides example of the range of perspective

4) it provides a constrssting or opposing view

Format quotations in the following manner:

Brief quotations of no more than four lines should be worked into the text within the usual margins from left to right, and enclosed by quotation marks. Use a signal phrase or tagline to introduce them, followed by a colon or comma. Longer passages should be set off in block format, indented and aligned 10 spaces from the left margin, with no quotation marks but those that may be internal to the passage itself.

Example from “An Ocean of Plastic”:

Kitt Doucette describes the threat of plastic to all marine life, and perhaps human life, too: “Even small organisms like jellyfish, lanternfish and zooplankton have started to ingest tiny bits of plastic. These species, the very foundation of the oceanic food web, are becoming saturated with plastic, which may be passed further up the food chain.” The fish we eat may contain the residues of these ingested plastic particles, and pose clear health risks. He explains, citing also the authority of a leading marine biologist:

[. . .] the chemical toxins concentrated in the [plastic] waste lodge themselves in the animals’ fatty tissues, accumulating at ever increasing levels the higher you go up the food chain. It isn’t clear yet if these chemicals are reaching humans, but PCB’s and DDT are know to disrupt reproduction in marine mammals. In human they have been linked to liver damage, skin lesions, and cancer. “The possibility of more and more creatures ingesting plastics that contain concentrated pollutants is real and quite disturbing,” says Richard Thompson, a British marine biologist who has been studying microplastics for 20 years.

Use brackets around any material you add for the sake of clarity or any change to the original necessary, such as a verb tense or use of a pronoun, or ellipsis punctuation to abbreviate the length of the passage. The source title, be it an article title in a magazine or newspaper or that of a website from which you have borrowed material, should be identified at the outset or your introduction and use of the material. The year or date of such information should be recent , or otherwise noted.

*MLA citations and works cited will not be necessary for this assignment.

 One of the modes or means of developing and organizing essay material is that of illustration or exemplification–providing examples to support a point or assertion or clarify a position. Examples are often used in tandem with description and narration and other modes of organization such as analysis, cause/effect and comparison and contrast. Examples may be presented in lists or itemized or a single one developed at length (the extended example). To remember: an illustration is a specific instance or case, an event, story, artifact, word or thing, picture, chart, map, etc. Some examples here follow:

While viruses and bacteria cause most of the common diseases suffered by people who live in the developed world, protozoa are the major cause of disease in undeveloped tropical zones. Of these diseases, the most widespread are malaria, amoebic dysentery, and African sleeping sickness.

The idea that art does not exist among the lower animals is a primitive notion. A perfect illustration of art in the animal kingdom is the art of the amazing bower birds of Australia. These birds decorate their bowers with shells, colored glass, and shining objects. Some paint their walls with fruit pulp, wet powdered charcoal, or paste of chewed up grass mixed with saliva. One kind of bird even makes a paintbrush from a wad of bark to apply the paint.

–both examples above taken from Readings for Writers, 11th ed.

There was always a touch of seediness and sadness to pay phones, and a sense of transience. Drug dealers made calls from them, and shady types who did not want their whereabouts known, and otherwise respectable people planning assignations, and people too poor to have phones of their own. In the movies, any character who used a pay phone was either in trouble or contemplating a crime. Pay phones came with their own special atmospherics and even accessories sometimes–the predictable bad smells and graffiti, of course, as well as cigarette butts, soda cans, scattered pamphlets from the Jehovah's Witnesses, and single bottles of beer (empty) still in their individual, street-legal paper bags. Mostly, pay phones evoked the mundane: "Honey, I'm jut leaving. I'll be there soon." But you could tell that a lot of undifferentiated humanity had flowed through these places, and that in the muteness of each pay phone's little space, wild emotion had howled.

–Ian Frazier, "Dearly Disconnected"

Considerations of what makes for good English or bad English are to an uncomfortably large extent matters of prejudice and conditioning. Until the eighteenth century it was correct to say "you was" if you were referring to one person. It sounds odd today, but the logic is impeccable. Was is a singular verb and were a plural one. Why should you take a plural verb when the sense is clearly singular? The answer–surprise, surprise–is that Robert Lowth [author of A Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762)] didn't like it. "I'm hurrying, are I not?" is hopelessly ungrammatical, but "I'm hurrying, aren't I?"–merely a contraction of the same words–is perfect English. Many is almost always a plural (as in "Many people were there"), but not when it is followed by a, as in "Many a man was there." There's no inherent reason why these things should be so. They are not defensible in terms of grammar. They are because they are.

–Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way

I believe I have omitted mentioning that, in my first voyage from Boston, being becalmed off Block island, our people set about catching cod, and hauled up a great many. Hitherto I had stuck to my resolution of not eating animal food, and on this occasion I considered, with my master Tryon [author Thomas Tryon], the taking of every fish as a kind of unprovoked murder, since none of them had, or ever could do us any injury that might justify the slaughter. All this seemed very reasonable. But I had formerly been a great lover of fish and, when this came hot out of the frying pan, it smelled admirably well. I balanced some time between principle and inclination, till I recollected that, when the fish were opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs; then thought I, "if you eat one another, I don't see why we mayn't eat you." So I dined upon cod very heartily, and continued to eat with other people, returning only now and occasionally to a vegetable diet. So convenient it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enable one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to.

–Ben Franklin, 1791

Essay#3 will require you come up with a topic that allows you to bring context to it by reading articles that have recently appeared addressing the topic, and incorporating some of what they have put across in a review that uses summary and some direct quotation.  As as a class we'll brainstorm possibilities today by reading "the news". The essay should support a clear thesis idea and be arranged in multi-paragraph form (three to six or more paragraphs). It should be titled, double-spaced, and a well edited 500 words or so in length. It will be due next week, week 4.

Topic Suggestions:

• the Economy
• the Environment
• the President
• the Wars
• the Oscars
• 
  
• 
  

Writing a summary: Handouts and discussion of sample text and summary conventions. 

Verb Tense Use: Exercises 3 and 4. at https://owl.english.purdue.edu/exercises/2/22/51

Week 2

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till. . . . We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. . . .

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance," from 1841 Essays

Welcome back! I hope your first and second weeks of school have gone well. It is Friday, a day for looking back and looking forward, I believe, or perhaps every day is so. We began last week with readings and freewriting exercises. Today we will follow up on the work you composed for submission today, sharing our thoughts and comments on the topics you've have addressed. We will also begin composing an essay about ourselves, an autobiographical piece structured by means of narration and description. We will explore how the things we own or perhaps even treasure reveal what has been pivotal in our lives. Writing is for many people a very satisfying way of exploring where they have been and where they may be going, and the connections between. In Why I Write, Joan Didion says: "We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and screamed, forget who we were."

Autobiographical narratives are structured as stories about the writer himself or herself. They show an individual caught in some way or facing something troublesome, which has to be dealt with or overcome in some measure. The story or stories show the author both recounting and reflecting on personal experience, making sense of it, putting it in some meaningful frame to be understood and thus communicated to a reader. Such essays have either a historical, social, and/or psychological frame, delving into the events, the changes, the lessons, the themes that have shaped the author's life. Who one has been, and is, is the central focus and the story elements–character, setting, action–serve to dramatize the life. Description is used to convey the physical characteristics of person, places, and things, to bring them vividly to life in the reader's imagination, in specific forms, colors, shapes, sounds, scents–whatever the key sensations.

By writing we become, I believe, more conscious of what we see, for in the theater of our mind we look at things, turn them over, bring them close, take a step back . . . in short we find angles of view that might have escaped us had we not stopped to contemplate the show. Writing about anything, writing well that is, demands we find some perspective to put our subject in, a stance or idea to frame it. The frame and/or thesis tells a reader what to make of our subject. Say the subject–the raw material–is some event we can't shake from memory, whether from childhood, adolescence, or our adult life. Something happened and the memory of it has been shedding a certain light on the stage (screen?) that is there in our head. This subject (event, phenomenon, fact, instance, example, case–call it what you will) must be interpreted, its shape discovered, framed, its meaning revealed (in so far as we can grasp it).

A composition of even a single paragraph must organize itself around an idea, stated or implied, which is the thesis or topic idea. Here are some examples, with topic ideas in italic letters:

Everything is changing. . . . This is a prediction I can make with absolute certainty. As human beings, we are constantly in a state of change. Our bodies change every day. Our attitudes are constantly evolving. Something that we swore by five years ago is now almost impossible for us to imagine ourselves believing. The clothes we wore a few years back now look strange to us in old photographs. The things we take for granted as absolutes, impervious to change, are, in fact, constantly doing just that. Granite boulders become sand in time. Beaches erode and shape new shorelines. Our buildings become outdated and are replaced with modern structures that also will be torn down. Even those things which last thousands of years, such as the Pyramids and the Acropolis, also are changing. This simple insight is very important to grasp if you want to be a no-limit person, and are desirous of raising no-limit children. Everything you feel, think, see, and touch is constantly changing.

–Wayne Dyer, What Do You Really Want For Your Children?

Starting about one million years ago, the fossil record shows an accelerating growth of the human brain. It expanded at first at the rate of of one cubic inch of additional gray matter every hundred thousand years: then the growth rate doubled; it doubled again; and finally it doubled once more. Five hundred thousand years ago the rate of growth hit its peak. At that time, the brain was expanding at the phenomenal rate of ten cubic inches every hundred thousand years. No other organ in the history of life is known to have grown as fast.

–Robert Jastrow, Until the Sun Dies

What my mother never told me was how fast time passes in adult life. I remember, when I was little, thinking I would live to be at least as old as my grandmother, who was dynamic even at ninety-two, the age at which she died. Now I see those ninety-two years hurtling by me. And my mother never told me how much fun sex could be, or what a discovery it is. Of course, I'm of an age when mothers really didn't tell you much about anything. My mother never told me the facts of life.

–Joyce Susskind, "Surprises in a Woman's LIfe"

In the old-time Pueblo world, beauty was manifested in behavior and in one's relationships with other living beings. Beauty was as much a feeling of harmony as it was a visual, aural, or sensual effect. The whole person had to be beautiful, not just the face or the body; faces and bodies could not be separated from hearts and souls. Health was foremost in achieving this sense of well-being and harmony; in the old-time Pueblo world, a person who did not look healthy inspired feelings of worry and anxiety, not feelings of well-being. A healthy person, of course, is in harmony with the world around her; she is at peace with herself too. Thus an unhappy person or spiteful person would not be considered beautiful.

--Leslie Marmon Silko, Essays

Some paragraphs, particularly ones descriptive or narrative, have no directly stated topic idea, but the idea is implied, the purpose of the paragraph clear. What is the implied topic idea in the following examples?

Every year the aspiring photographer brought a stack of his best prints to an old, honored photographer, seeking his judgment. Every year the old man studied the print and painstakingly ordered them into two piles, bad and good. Every year the old man moved a certain landscape print into the bad stack. At length, he turned to the young man: "You submit this same landscape every year, and every year I put it on the bad stack. Why do you like it so much?" The young photographer said, "Because I had to climb a mountain to get it."

--Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

We would go to the well and wash in the ice-cold, clear water, grease our legs with the equally cold, stiff Vaseline, then tiptoe into the house. We wiped the dust from our toes and settled down for schoolwork, cornbread, clabbered milk, prayers and bed, always in that order. Momma was famous for pulling off the quilts to examine our feet. If they weren't clean enough for her, she took the switch and woke up the offender with a few aptly placed burning reminders.

--Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Notice that well written paragraphs develop adequately the subject; that is, there is sufficient detail and enough examples to make a persuasive case for the idea(s) expressed. Often, too, in descriptive and narrative writing you will notice the pattern of arrangement is either spatial (the eye moves from point A to B and on to C and D in clear, coherent direction) or chronological (time is tracked either from a beginning point on forward, or backward, or some mix of the past, present, and future). Sometimes both the spatial, as in description of a setting or scene, and the chronological, as in an account of actions in time, are at work. Look again at the examples above. How are they arranged?

Stories–narratives–we tell them endlessly. They are built into the fabric of our lives. Our very lives are the stories we tell about them. The meaning we make of existence comes clear in the stories we tell each other, and each is one of the untold gazillions accumulating over time. Each has a point or a purpose. Each involves events, actions, a conflict set in motion, consequences, perhaps the underlying motives and feelings of those involved, the lessons and insights gained through the experiences recounted.

The following paragraphs are shaped as narratives:

A hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb, and these six were among the survivors. They still wonder why they lived when so many others died. Each of them counts many small items of chance or volition–a step taken in time, a decision to go indoors, catching one streetcar instead of the next–that spared him. And now each knows that in the act of survival he lived a dozen lives and saw more death than he ever thought he would see. At the time, none of them knew anything.

John Hersey, Hiroshima

We imagine the action that took place in the event referenced above, but the writer does not show us the exploding bomb, the fire and smoke and devastation all around. The wails of the living, and the dying.

Narration does more than suggest, it shows action:

When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick–one never does when a shot goes home–but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd. In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to go there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly sticken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralyzed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a long time–it might have been five seconds, I dare say–he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old. I fired again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a third time. That was the shot that did for him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skywards like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And then down he came, his belly towards me, with a crash that seemed to shake the ground even where I lay.

George Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant"

Notice how Orwell works the elements of sight, sound, movement in space, and deep feeling into the account, revealing only at the last line he has been lying down, firing up at the huge animal whose final collapse reverberates in our imagination.

Consider well the opening paragraph, as it should serve to draw the reader in to the story subject.  Choose concrete, specific words to relay setting and the emotions at the heart of your piece.  The following is the start of a roughly 5000 word biographical essay about the ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, who defected to the West in 1974, and returned at age 50 to pay homage to his roots and dance for all those who had in some way shaped him.

     It is raining, and Mikhail Baryshnikov is standing in a courtyard in Riga, the capital of Latvia, pointing up at two corner windows of an old stucco building that was probably yellow once.  With him are his companion, Lisa Rhinehart, a former dancer with American Ballet Theatre, and two of his children–Peter, eight, and Aleksandra, or Shura, sixteen.  He is showing them the house where he grew up. "It's Soviet communal apartment," he says to the children.  "In one apartment, five families.  Mother and Father have room at corner.  See?  Big window.  Mother and Father sleep there, we eat there, table there.  Then other little room, mostly just two beds, for half brother, Vladimir, and me.  In other rooms, other people.  For fifteen, sixteen people, one kitchen, one toilet, one bathroom, room with bathtub.  But no hot water for bath.  On Tuesday and Saturday, Vladimir and I go with Father to public bath."

      I open the front door of the building and peer into the dark hallway.  Let's go up," I suggest.  "No," he says.  "I can't."  It is more than a quarter century since he was here last.

                                                                                      from "The Soloist," by Joan Acocella

Most of our stories are of events not so unusual; they are of events more homely, domestic, ordinary. These events are no less potentially interesting and dramatic. An important strategy is to narrow your account down to the one or several key events and not to swamp the telling by including too much or anything that does not work to make your dramatic purpose clear, flowing, and forcefully delivered. Dialogue used sparingly may heighten the sense of immediacy and reality. It should reflect real conversation, minus whatever does not move the action forward or reveal character. Simple words and short sentences work best.

Writing Assignment #2, due week 3

:   In 500-600 words explore some element(s) of your life and identity in terms of both the past and present. Use some concrete means, some material possession or thing--be it only an image of a person, place, or object--to make the connection between your past and present. You will want to present this memento, as it were, and use it as a means of developing and providing structure to the essay. You, your life, your history, identity concerns, interests, etcetera are the actual focus of th essay. Remember, you want to create a relatively sharp portrait of yourself and some revealing moment or event that serves the narrative element. Begin in present tense, and create a clear sense of present setting or place.

The opening lines and/or paragraph should at least hint at the central idea. Supporting paragraphs should develop the promised topic by narrative and/or descriptive means. The conclusion should underscore your main idea and bring a sense of finish.  

Title the essay, double space the lines, indent for each paragraph.

The following is a list of topic suggestions:

*A now-I-know-better experience.

*An experience that shows something of what people are made of, or of what you are made.

*An experience that shows the power of love, anger, desire, fear, etcetera.

*An experience that brought about a significant change in you.

*An experience that reveals the kind of family you have.

*An encounter with a "stranger" you can't now forget.

SENTENCE TYPES

Sentence Type 1: The simple sentence has one subject and one predicate, the base of which is always a verb or verb phrase. And in English, the subject usually comes up front, followed by the verb and any other predicate elements. This subject-verb combo is called a clause, an independent clause, because it expresses a grammatically complete, stand-alone thought.

Jesus wept. Nuts! (that is nuts, this is nuts, he is nuts, etc., where that, this, he are the subjects and "is" the verb, with "nuts" describing the situation or person, as an adjective or subject complement).

Style has meaning. Choices resonate. What is the subject in each of the two preceding sentences? Style and choices, of course. And the verbs? Has and resonate, of course.

And in the following?

The house is surrounded by razor wire.

He and I fight too often. We cannot be good for one another.

After spring sunset, mist rises from the river, spreading like a flood.

From a bough, floating down river, insect song.

He drove the car carefully, his shaggy hair whipped by the wind, his eyes hidden behind wraparound mirror shades, his mouth set in a grim smile, a .38 Police Special on the seat beside him, the corpse stuffed in the trunk.

They slept.–intransitive (takes no direct object of the verb)

The girl raised the flag.– transitive (the flag is the object of the verb)

Inverted order: Lovable he isn't. This I just don't understand.

Tall grow the pines on the hills.

A fly is in my soup. With expletive (which delays the subject): There is a fly in my soup.

Sentence type 2: The compound sentence has at least two independent subject and verb combinations or clauses, and no dependent clauses. Each independent clause is joined by means of some conjunction or punctuation that serves to join:

Autumn is a sad season, but I love it nonetheless.

Name the baby Huey, or I'll cut you out of my will.

The class was young, eager, and intelligent, and the teacher delighted in their presence.

The sky grew black, and the wind died; an ominous quiet hung over the whole city.

My mind is made up; however, I do want to discuss the decision with you.

Sentence Type 3: The complex sentence is composed of one independent clause and at least one dependent clause.

Many people believe that God does not exist.

Those who live in glass houses should not cast stones.

As I waited for the bus, the sun beat down all around me.

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Any of the seven short coordinating conjunctions can be used before the comma to join independent clauses:  for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so:  they can be remembered as FANBOYS.

*A semi-colon (;) must be used before adverbial conjunctions joining independent clauses:  however, indeed, therefore, thus, in fact, moreover, in addition, consequently, still, etcetera.

Sentence Type 4:  The compound-complex sentence has at least two independent clauses and one dependent clause.

As I waited for the bus, the sun beat down all around me, and I shivered in my thoughts.

Because she said nothing, we assumed that she wanted nothing, but her mother knew better.

She and her sister Amina are dancers, and they work at parties around town when they can.

While John shopped for groceries, two armed men forced their way into his home; fortunately, his wife and children were away.

Examples of subordinating conjunctions––those used in from of dependent clauses–– include the following:  because, that, which, who, when, while, where, wherever, though, as though, although, since, as, if, as if, unless, et al .

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