Prelude, Context, Problem, Solution

Have you ever lost someone you love in a drunk driving accident? People lose their lives every day by making one huge mistake. It involves drinking beers and deciding not to have a designated driver. Every year, thousands of people are killed by drunk-driving related incidents. It is so simple to change these numbers. But it takes a certain amount of intelligence to do so. How can we prevent people from getting into drunk driving related incidents and costing thousands of people their lives? There are many ways to make it happen. You can always set a designated driver or have money for a taxi prepared. You could have a plan to stay over at a nearby friend’s instead of heading home. 

Bibliography for Tumblr paper

1) "About." Tumblr. Tumblr, Inc. Web. 15 Apr. 2012. <http://www.tumblr.com/about>.

2) Bruns, Axel. "News Blogs and Citizen Journalism: Perpetual Collaboration in Evaluating the News." Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. 2nd ed. Vol. 45. New York: Peter Lang, 2009. 69-99. Print. Digital Formations.

3) Chapman, Andy. "Tumblr Case Study." NetHosting.com. NetHosting, 6 Mar. 2012. Web. 15 Apr. 2012. <http://www.nethosting.com/buzz/case-studies/tumblr-case-study>.

4) "Why You'll Love Tumblr." Why Everyone Loves Tumblr. Tumblr, Inc. Web. 15 Apr. 2012. <http://www.tumblr.com/why-tumblr>.

5)  Contributers. "Microblogging." Wikipedia.org. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 10 Apr. 2012. Web. 15 Apr. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Microblogging&oldid=486665233>. 
6) Hedengren, Thord Daniel. Tackling Tumblr: Web Publishing Made Simple. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2011. EBook.


1- A page giving the description of Tumblr, clippers of reviews and how the website runs and how it was founded. 
2- A chapter about how blogging differs from mainstream news sources, mostly by the lack of moderation.
3- statistics about Tumblr.
4- a description of tumblr features
5- a description of what is microblogging.
6- a book about how to use tumblr and its coding.

the essay in 2parts: part 1

The essay is a weird conundrum. I believe the essay is a work which allows for a personal connection. The article is more fact based and has less emotion behind it. The essay can get in your face and provide a story and something exciting to read. Paul Heilker makes many points towards how the essay is an art form of free expression. The most important part in my opinion is that the exploratory essay can be private thoughts and you control who reads them. Articles are more focused on reaching others who are not on a personal level with the author.

In terms of essays I would like to read, there are so many options. My first choice would one that was light in tone, maybe containing a personal story. I want to be able to connect with the writer. In order for that to happen, the work must have been written with their full heart and soul. I like essays that make me think as well. I don't want to hear random facts that I already know. For example, I want to see an essay that explains how music is connected to wildlife. This is just a random option, but still, I would be excited for it.

Paragraph Revision for Wound Dresser Essay

To start off, we will start with how Wilson interprets the arts. In chapter ten of his book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, he states that, “Artistic inspiration common to everyone in varying degree rises from the artesian wells of human nature. Its creations are meant to be delivered directly to the sensibilities of the beholder without analytic explanation”. In short, art is based on human experiences and emotions. It is due to this fact that people become so interested in art. The beholder can feel the same emotion that the artist wants to convey. How Wilson explains this is Gene-Culture CoEvolution. As humans progressed in evolving minds, culture came into existence. We gained the ability to understand what was going on in our world and to put it into a form of interpretation.

Points to Focus On:

Remove Unnecessary Words.

Exchange long phrases for words.

We will begin our exploration by learning how Wilson interprets art. In Chapter 10 of his book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, he states, “Artistic inspiration common to everyone in varying degree rises from the artesian wells of human nature. Its creations are meant to be delivered directly to the sensibilities of the beholder without analytic explanation”. In short, art is based on life. People are interested in an artwork because the artist has successfully conveyed the specific emotions that he or she wants them to feel. This is in part due to what Wilson calls Gene-Culture Coevolution. As humans' evolved physically, so did their ability to understand what was going on around them. They wanted to convey their emotions with others. Thus, art was born on cave walls.

Whitman Now

I am writing about the article "Whitman Now." from The Whitman Virginia Quarterly from April 2005. The article, written by Rafael Campo, briefly discusses how to define Walt Whitman's poetry in the time of the Bush administration. The whole reason why I am writing about The Wound Dresser is because art is supposed to transcend to all times. That, according to Wilson, is how the arts and humanities work. What better way to see how the poem still makes  than an article about it. My other references include a book of letters from Walt Whitman to his mother during the Civil War, and the first 14 pages of a thesis on how Hospital Sketches by Louisa May Alcott and The Wound Dresser are related to one another through the events of the Civil War. Such work is true and beautiful because it conveys emotions and views from another time and makes them visible to future readers.

Works Cited for The Wound Dresser

1)  Traphagen, Sarah Katelyn. "Our Wounded, our Wounds: Disruption, Ideological Permeability and Transference of Agony in Louisa may Alcotts "Hospital Sketches" and Walt Whitmans "Memoranda during the War" and "the Wound-Dresser"." State University of New York at Buffalo, 2010. United States -- New York: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I. Web. 6 Mar. 2012.



2)  Campo, Rafael. "Whitman Now." Virginia Quarterly Review 81.2 (2005): 126-127. Academic SearchPremier. Web. 6 Mar. 2012. 


3) Whitman, Walt. The Wound Dresser; Letters Written to His Mother from the Hospitals in Washington during the Civil War,. Ed. Richard Maurice Bucke. New York: Bodley, 1949. Print.


1) The thesis revolves around how Louisa May Alcott and Walt Whitman worked as nurses in war hospitals and how it was reflected in their writing.
2) The essay concerns how to relate Walt Whitman's poems to the Bush presidency over 100 years later.
3) This book is a collection of letters from when Walt Whitman served as a nurse during the american civil war.

From Genes to Culture

I was reading the chapter when I came across the section on how changes in breeding and heredity are studied. First of course they mentioned the Kenyan marathon runners and how their abilities are based on heredity and environment. I found this easy to relate to because most people today know how amazingly well runners from Kenya perform at the Olympics. The. They talked about studying twins. Ive heard of these cases do often it wasn't that hard to follow. Heritability is still a term I have a hard time understanding, for now.

The Wound Dresser

Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass contains all of the poetry he ever wrote and was not completed until after his death. One of his poems that really captures me is "The Wound Dresser". Walt Whitman served as a nurse during the Civil War. He uses a great amount of imagery and metaphors to how people thought during the great struggle. It also shows how men find great love for one another in brotherhood. It grabbed my attention since I heard it written as a song for orchestra and Baritone singer. It connected with me and made me think of the war in that time. That is what makes it true and beautiful to me.  

Fixing Poorly Defined Characters- Original sentence and revision

Original: Classical music concerts are often attended by people who either play or listen to classical music.
Revision: People who listen to and play classical music will often attend concerts of that genre.

Arts and Interpretation: My List

1) Poetry- The Wound Dresser by Walt Whitman
2) Music- Beethoven's 5th Symphony
3) Painting- The Twittering Machine by Paul Klee

I have chosen these works of art because I find them interesting and discovered them through music. I've played Beethoven's Symphony once and got a better understanding through music history class. I discovered The Wound Dresser after hearing a version for voice and orchestra by John Adams. Finally, The Twittering Machine is also the name of a movement from 5 Klee Pictures by Peter Maxwell Davies, which I am playing in Orchestra this semester.

Revised

Pratt describes contact zones as being imagined communities because such communities do not exist in areas where there are natural or man-made borders blocking the trade of ideas from one place to another. There is an obvious prevention of the utopian society which Pratt seeks to understand and make real in her discussions and summaries.

Draft

From Reading Quiz:
...She [Mary Louise Pratt] obviously feels that people who are connected by means other than their homeland have strong bonds with others of the same kind. These [imagined] communities are bounded by the idea that sharing key points with just more than one person makes it strong enough to last outside one's borders.

How I Write Seems So Normal

Gloria Anzaldua describes her mix of English and Spanish in her speaking and writing in a place where it isn't accepted. Everyone apparently has his or her own set of linguistics. Mine involve a mix of slang and medium to high-level vocabulary, like what my parents say to other adults. I sometimes stutter with my words when I speak off the top of my head. However, when I am writing, there is hardly anything that stops my train of thought. Sometimes I notice that I say "So" at the end of my sentences when I speak. Other than that, I can't find any other way to describe my speaking and writing format.

"On Loving and Hating my Mentally Retarded Mother" by Carol Rambo Ronai, Ph.D.

Autoethnography is a form of communication in which someone from one culture engages in sharing their own experience to a person or group of people of a different culture. The most famous example is Poma's 1200 page letter to King Phillip II. In said letter, he attempted to describe the life of the Andean people under rule of the Conquistadors. It was written in semi-understandable spanish. Poma had written it out not understanding grammar and it never reached the King of Spain.

Today, there are many different types of autoethnographic texts. These texts are written to explain one subculture's life to the people of another subculture. Below is a link to what I would consider an auto ethnographic text. The article, by Carol Rambo Ronai, is a detailed account of the life of a woman living with her mentally retarded mother, facing sexual and physical abuse, and having family members who are hard on her as well. The author uses vivid detail to shock the reader. This example is definitely for mature readers at best. Since the article is 49 pages long, I am providing two examples from the article that are work safe on this post.
http://www.carolrambo.com/articles/mrmother.pdf

I found her diary once.  Inside it her aunt had drawn
beautiful pictures of bears and described picnics and birthday
parties Suzanne had attended with them.  On a page towards the end,
my mother had written in her own scraggly handwriting:  "I mary
Frank today.  I be his booful brid.  I be so hapy."  Reading these
words was physically revolting to me.  Marrying Frank was a way for
her to live out some kind of fantasy story in her mind.  How could
the world let them marry?  His family knew what a monster he was;
he had molested one of his sister's children.  What the hell was
everybody in Dysfunction land thinking?  Does her definition of the
situation apply?  His?  What should my definition be?  I don't
understand why I care.  It is like a hangnail I can't leave alone--
the more I mess with it the rattier and more painful it becomes. (13)

The government has contributed to the pretense that everything
is normal.  They won't certify her as too retarded to hold a job,
but they will provide her vocational rehabilitation.  I worked many
hours, on three separate occasions, over an eight year period of
time to get her services.  Each time she stopped the counseling and
training the moment my back was turned.  Since social service
workers cannot force services on anyone, and since Suzanne has to
want the help, no one can do anything about it.  And so we go on
protecting her from the truth, lying, keeping silent and pretending
everything is perfectly normal.  In a sense we are complicit agents
in her failure.  If she did not have us, if she did not have the
trust fund, if she could not go on living this fiction, she would
be forced to go out and get job training. (24)

Contact Zones

Mary Louise Pratt discussed autoethnographic writing in a lecture to her fellow MLA members back in 1991. Autoethnography is a type of research involving working with others to discover oneself in ways that are usually unseen from a introspective view. This lecture included two examples of how people were working through transculturation, or the merging of different cultures, to communicate ideas to others. These were a 1,200-page letter called The First New Chronicle and Good Government by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, and an assignment from Mary Louise Pratt’s son entitled “A grate adventchin” following a prompt from his teacher. Each work attempted to express something that they felt very strong about. With the limited amount of knowledge of language, each tried to convey their message. The difference, Pratt's son wrote one paragraph. Poma wrote a large letter and illustrations of life in Kuzco. Also, Poma was describing his home and new life with the conquistadors. Pratt's son was writing about his idea for an invention. That would help him, his friends, and his teachers. In terms of who was more successful, I would say that Pratt's son had better luck getting his message across. It took 299 years to not only locate the letter, but to translate it as well. Poma was using a writing system that was not even legible to anyone else outside of the Andes. The paragraph on inventions may have been misspelled, but he knew that it would sound the same as he meant it to.