Small Aspect: My Driveway

My driveway at home is an essiential part of where we live even though it gets overlooked. It slighty slopes downwards from my garage to the street. Its color is either gray or white determined by the amount of sun that shines upon it. There are some faded tire tracks at the bottom of it from starting to turn out of it. You can see ants scurrying around it with some brown mounds along the cracks. Over the years the driveway has taken a beating from the countless basketball games and the inches of snow but it still stands storng and is ready for more.

Buffalo for the Broken Heart

How does "Buffalo for the Broken Heart" fit into the larger "nature writing" canon?
The book fits in because of all the land use he writes about. He writes a lot about the scenery around his land and what lives on the land. He also writes about what he has to do to maintain it which is very much like what my group is doing for the Casey Project. We are trying to figure out how to restore then maintain a prairie and he is working on maintaining his land for his animals.

How does O'Brien relate to his environment?
He relates to his enviroment by living on the ranch and being around it all of the time. He likes to see the wilderness that lives around him. An example would be the falcon, he really likes the bird and uses it throughout the book. He would also rotate the cows early in the book to keep the land as fresh as it could be.

If you were to make one suggestion to O'Brien, regarding his land use, what would it be?
I don't have a suggestion because I have never lived on a ranch so I think that he would know what he is doing more than I would.

Wilderness Experience

When I was younger my parents bought a horse for my siblings and me and we kept it at a friends farm in Dike, Iowa. We went up there a lot so we could ride the horse and when we were there we did some other things as well. We had bond fires, go kart rides, chased chickens and sheep around, and played a little wiffle ball. One of the most fun things though was just exploring the property with my siblings. We would walk in the cornfields and in little forests. It was fun seeing all the wildlife and i will remember the memories made for the rest of my life.

O'Brien's Land

At the beginning of the book O'Brien used his land in a way that was unfamilar to some of the ranchers around the area. He seperated his ranch up into different sections and would only let the cattle go into one section at a time therefore he was saving a bunch of grass for later. When the cattle got done there section it would also give the grass some time to regroup.

Casey Property

I was lying down in the long white van on the gravel at the top of the hill. I was having a good time resting while waiting for the other groups to get back when all the sudden i heard a little bit of laughter coming from outside. I looked out the window to see Kyle holding on to something. So I looked closer and saw that it was the spine and ribs of a deer. Everybody around looked kind of shocked that he would actually pick it up and then the teacher had to take it back.

Spring Break Snapshot

There were 15,000 fans in the 17,000 seat arena for the NCAA Basketball Tournament. About 70% of them wearing the Kansas Jayhawk crimson and blue. With about 5 minutes left in the game every single one of them had a scared look of disbelief on their face. The Kansas players and coach looked overwhelmed. With all of this the thousand University of Northern Iowa fans were looking wishful and excited in their purple and gold while clapping along to the fight song during a timeout. There was a great feeling from them that something remarkable was about to happen.

Wendell Berry Poem

This poem is very different from any I have ever read. By that I am talking about the way it is set up. The punctuation is everywhere. There are periods at the beginning, middle, and end of some of the lines. This makes me want to hear how Wendell Berry would read it. I would like to hear how he uses the periods and how he goes from line to line. When I went to see Patrica Smith read her poems it was a world of difference between when I read it in my head and when she read it aloud to everybody. I think there would be a world of dirrerence in this poem as well.

Sandra Steingraber

Context
Steingraber uses her real life examples to convey her message throughout her writing from Having Faith. In the first part of the piece she tells about when she was growing up and how she was always interested in science. She tells how she read the textbook and about how she read it during a rained out recess or a spelling drill. Sandra then tells us how her favorite part of the books were the diagrams representing the ecological food chains and this takes us into her next part with statistics on how breast feeding has a lot of problems to it. After she tells about all that, she goes on to another one of her real life examples. She tells how she breastfeeds her baby and then uses this to transition into how there was a big outbreak in Belguim and how she feels bad for the Belguim mothers.

John Muir

My First Summer in the Sierra

Audience: To people interested in his journey
Purpose: To tell about his expierience in the Sierra
Ethos: He was there so he knows what it was like and he drew a pictures as proof
Pathos: He writes about living things that are human and gives them human characteristics
Logos: The picture of the movement of the grasshopper

A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf

Audience: I thought it was kind of like a journal so his audience was himself and anybody who wants to read about this guys journey
Purpose: To tell people about his journey to the gulf
Ethos: He listens to stories told by the men of alligators
Pathos: He writes that everybody is loved by God and its not about humans
Logos: He uses Bible references

Polemic: Industrial Tourism and the National Parks- Abbey

I think the audience is people who don't care about national parks and the purpose is to get them to care.
What kind of rhythm does the writer create? Is there a variety in the sentence structure?
The writer creates a funny yet serious rhythm. He establishes it early by cracking a couple of jokes but later makes some serious points. I like this because it makes you want to keep reading plus you are getting something out of it. The sentence structure is pretty normal. I basically just chose this question so I could write about the funny tone. There are a couple spots where it is not quite as normal. In the middle of the piece he lists five solutions to a question and he numbers a couple of paragraphs later.

Speech at Grand Canyon Arizona - Roosevelt

I think the audience was the people of Arizona, Native Americans, and people who have not been to the Grand Canyon before. There were many purposes of the speech. One was for Arizonans to know what Roosevelt wanted to do with the Grand Canyon. Another purpose was to tell Native Americans that they are part of us and we are equal. The last purpose I think was to tell people to visit the Grand Canyon because it is a great thing to see.
What specific details stay in your mind? Why? How do these small details lead to larger ideas?
What really stuck out to me was the fact that he used his military backgroud a lot in the speech. It stuck out because he used it so many times. The stories about the military helped to get to some of the larger ideas.

Speechwriters LLC- Southeast Asia

Audience Purpose
I think the audience is people in the United States. The purpose is to compare Southern California to Southeast Asia and portray how they feel. Ethos is represented in the use of "us" and "we". Pathos is used because they are trying to make it appealing by comparing it to Southern California. There isnt really anything to do with logos.

A First American Views His Land - Momaday

Who is the audience? What is the prupose?
I think the piece was intended for people who don't care about the earth because the purpose of the writing was to bring atention to nature and show how the Native Americans treat nature as if it were family.
How does the writer structure and to what effect?
The writer uses poems in the writing. The piece starts out with a poem then talks about the past. Another poem is then used and the writer then uses some of his own things that he tells people. This goes on a couple more times and then it ends in a poem. This creates somewhat of a break for the reader which is nice because it is a long piece.

Wildness Symposium: Patricia Smith

I am not going to lie I was not very excited to go to the wildness symposium and listen to a poet but I came away very surprised. There is a huge difference between reading the poems yourself and having the actual poet read them to you. Patricia Smith captured the attention of everyone in the room by the way she read. She emphasized some words, said some words softly, and used a lot of different voices. Ms. Smith did this all while coming off of a cold. After every poem she would have to cough and take a sip of her drink.
When she was first introduced it was quite a long introduction due to all of the awards she has won and I can see why. She was a four time Poetry Slam champion and was on the HBO series Def Poetry Jam.
A few poems really stuck out to me on the day. The first one was about the dog Luther B. When she read this she used her New Orleans voice and it seemed like it was really her dog. We did find out before the poem though that she is not even a dog person. The next one was the one where 32 people died in the nursing home. The reason this one stuck out was because it was so long. My favorite one though was the last one she read. Ms. Smith read “Siblings” on page 75 in Blood Dazzler. It talks about all of the hurricanes that happened during the year and how they do not speak of Katrina.

Blood Dazzler: Katrina

What kind of rhythm does the writer create? Is there a variety in the sentence structure? Read the piece aloud to get a sense of the writer's voice. Write about the writer's rhythmic choices and their effect on the overall tone of the piece.
This poem is from the hurricanes point of view. It tells what the hurricane is doing and what it likes to do. It also talks about what kind of material it is going through and what it is picking up. An example of this would be when the hurricane talks about breaking through the slush, branches, and steel.
The writer creates a rhythm when there is a start of a new line. In the lines there are two or three commas separating what the hurricane is doing. This happens in every group of words beside the first.
The first line starts with the hurricane being born and how it is restless so it wants to get out of where ever it was. From there it takes us on the hurricanes journey.
I think the Patricia Smith uses this structure very effectively. I felt as if I knew the hurricane and it was telling me what was going on. So I think it was Patricia Smiths intention to make Hurricane Katrina sound like a human being but to still act like a hurricane. I think this because a human could not do most the things in the poem. A couple of examples would be when the hurricane says it broke through steel or when it was hungering for wood, walls, and unturned skin.

Snapshots

Write three 50-word "snapshots" (or, brief narratives) from key experiences you've had within environment/place.



We were at baseball practice on the edge of the town. Black clouds were running over the sky in very different patterns. The grass and dirt were darker than I had ever seen. All of the sudden winds picked up and it started raining very heavily. Tornado sirens went off. My teammates and I packed up our stuff as quick as possible and headed home.



I was exhausted and my shirt was drenched in sweat. Dark red mats on the ground with lighter red pads against the walls. It was a rectangular room that had far more length than width. About eight dimly lit lights on the ceiling with two more knocked out. Hard rock music blaring from the stereo while whistles go off randomly. A big white board with writing stands on one of the walls. The room was filled with high school kids trying to get on that board.

One side packed with red and white. The other side black. Inbetween light green turf that went on for 1oo yards with endzones in yellow. Twenty two players were on the field lined up for the opening play. A jumbotron stands on top of the southeast corner showing the action. Sweat wreaks on the field as popcorn does in the stands.

2 Questions

Two questions you'd like to ask both Rick Bass and Terry Tempest Williams
-How did Rick Bass become so fond of wolves?
-How would these guys writing be different if they lived in the city their whole lives?

Map of Cedar Falls, Iowa

I chose a road map that shows pretty much the whole city. Included in the map are mostly the streets with the main streets labeled and the parks. Also in there are some cemeteries, the University of Northern Iowa, and a hospital. Many things are left out like all of the houses, the buildings, and most of the street names. The houses and buildings are left out because it is just a road map and you don't need all of that but I think it would be good if they put some of the major buildings in so people who are not so familiar with the area could have some major landmarks. I also think it would be good to have the other street names in there but the map is not big enough for that.

UNI Dome

What does this image represent about your hometown? How would you represent it differently?

This is the UNI Dome located in Cedar Falls, Iowa. You can see it from miles away and if you don't it is probably the first thing you see when you get into town. It has hosted a varitey of events like college and high school football games, wrestling tournaments, basketball games, boat shows, and much more. Many people come from all over to go to these events so it brings a lot of business to the community. I wouldn't represent it any differently than it already is because its a great thing for the Cedar Falls area an I think a lot of people are proud of it.

Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place

What specific details stay in your mind? Why? How do these small details lead to larger ideas?

Some of the details that stuck in my mind are of the way he describes the Great Salt Lake area in the beginning. She goes into great depth and has a lot of descriptions. She talks about living things and gives a good example about the salt water that he did while in school. It really seems like the writer, Terry Tempest Williams, has a great appreciation and passion for this area.