Blog #7

The Omnivore's Dilemma is, in my opinion, our daily bread. We are constantly thinking about what we will eat. And not just what we will eat , but how will it taste and are we making a healthy choice? In fact, that is what I thought before reading Michael Pollan's book. Now there are questions to add to my dilemma. Where is my meat coming from? What was the animal ,I am about to eat, fed. How large is my carbon footprint? Where is the nearest farmer's market? Is there corn residue in my hair?

Pollan made me think about my food choices in a much more complicated and sophisticated manner. This book has made me a person that understands the importance to sustain nature and see the connection between the future of our planet and our everyday choices. This might sound too bold, but it is true. Every step counts on our journey. So we can start with small ones. Try to buy local food, go to the farmer's markets and buy this incredibly fresh and surprisingly cheep food. Eat mostly vegetables and fruit. Eat animal products in moderation, and if you can, buy organic or preferably grass-fed meat. I personally joined The Park Slope Coop, a local food collective, to enjoy all these benefits under one roof.

Blog #9

As the first most important text , I am choosing the "Gender Advertising" by Irving Goffman. This was one of the first papers we read, and I connected to it immediately. The text described successfully manners in advertisement that we are exposed to on a daily basis. The text was a bridge between our writing class and real life.The text made me think about writing in a new way. Since then, I can watch TV and when the commercials come on I am not annoyed. I've been watching them carefully to see the meanings behind them. I imagine in my head, for the first time, what I can write about that particular commercial. How can I successfully describe it to the reader and why is it interesting to write about in the first place.

The second text I enjoyed very much was "The Omnivorous Dilemma". I loved the way Michael Pollan walks us through the four different food paths. His approach to the topic was brilliant and very educational. First he maps out four ways food can be produced today and sends himself on a journey to examine them all. The book is hands on , includes great research and explores the good and the bad in all of them. I like the way Pollan writes non-fiction book and makes it so easy to read. This book is an inspiration. No matter how complicated the topic is, I can see now how one can put it in writing. What I am trying to say, no matter how complicated the subject is, if you think about it long and well enough and have the tools and skills, you can write about it in a successful manner.

The third text helped me with the writing a lot. The eighth chapter in the book "They Say I Say" has showed me how to connect sentences and my thoughts. This part of writing is still a struggle for me. So many ideas come in to my head, but not in ordered manner. So I usually write them all down, in a quick rush. Then I try to connect them to each other in a logic order.
Using transitions and transition terms does make the paper more understanding. After all, that is what we all aiming for. Also, I repeat myself a lot while writing a paper. This chapter showed me how to do this effectively without sounding monotonous. It is still a struggle to master this part, but at least I am learning how to fix the problem. As a result, I open this book frequently while writing my papers and I always find something new I can use for particular problems. In addition, "The Bedford Handbook" has been an excellent help throughout the semester. At first I had a hard time understanding it. It seemed complicated and overwhelming. As the class progressed, I found the book helpful and very resourceful.

In conclusion, these are the text I picked, but have to say I was inspired by many more and find all of them helpful. Each of these works opened a new door to understanding writing and connected me to the process. Thank you.

Blog #8

As a little girl, I was used to seeing the slaughter of the pigs every fall, slaughter of chickens almost every Saturday and rabbits were beheaded and skinned on days before holidays. My grandfather was a butcher and also raised his own animals at his beautiful farm in the country.

We loved all the animals on the farm, fed them each day and petted them on the days before we ate them. It never crossed my mind to see the ritual as something wrong or brutal. "This is a cycle of life" , my grandfather would say, while skinning the rabbit's coat and exposing its pink fresh flash.

That is why, the approach of Polyface Farms to farming and their philosophy of a meat production sound so familiar and right to me. On the other hand,  Polyface Farm and the butchers in my homeland are rare in today's mass production of meat. The ideal of eating the animal that was loved and cared for properly is unrealistic. In the article "Against Meat" published by The New York Time Magazine this October, the author Jonathan Safran Foer presented the hard facts: "...factory farms now produce more than 99 percent of the animals eaten in this country.” This leaves me spending a lot of time and money trying to find the remaining 1% or to stop eating meat at all. Why? The 99% of meat in this country is produced in horrible conditions, lot of it is fed food that is indigestible for their kind. Also the amount of CO2 emitted to the atmosphere by the mass production of animals is alarming. Foer describes it : "...reports by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N and others, factory farming has made animal agriculture the No. 1 contributor to global warming." 

So right now I choose not to eat meat and I am searching a way to reach the 1% of meat produce in the United States by traditional farming , that would remind me the childhood approach to the " life cycle".

Blog #6

a. What does “organic” mean? And how is it rhetorical?

As I just disappointingly found out in The Omnivore's Dilemma, the word organic has a different meaning for the believers of the organic farming movement and for today's food industry regulated by USDA.

Like Pollan, I imagined a lot of things under the word "organic". The food that is labeled organic is grown without the use of pesticides, the soil is treated with humus instead of chemical fertilizers, the animals grace on the green pasture, and the farm stands next to a cute red and white barn somewhere in the Catskills. I guess I am thirty years behind the times. The farms were always organic,in the sense of being one big living organism, till the discovery of fertilizers and pesticides that "set agriculture on its industrial path"(Pollan,146).The word organic started to appear again back in 1970's to describe the alternative farming mostly practiced by hippies. Their organic farming movement evolved around three ideas. 1) new way to grow food, 2) grow what people want to eat and 3) independent distribution of the food. (Pollan,153). The"ideal held that you could not divorce these three elements.."(Pollan,153). This all changed in 1990's when USDA stepped in to regulate the word, so "mainstream food companies" could start profiting from this fast growing organic industry.(Pollan,154)

This works well in the rhetorical sense: The industry is selling a wide range of products using "a word that had always meant different things to different people."(Pollan,154).

Blog #5

a. What does Pollan mean when he says, “Men have become tools of their tools” (150-200).
b. Men, too, face pressures concerning their diet and body image. What are some of those pressures?

a. Pollan is not referring just to farmers when he writes, “Men have become tools of their tools”, but to modern men in general. Aren't we all the tools of our tools. I am talking about our newest i phones, i pods, stunning black BMW's, a bigger house that we cannot afford and the luxurious vacation charged to our credit cards. We might think that Bill the Farmer is pathetic, but there is no difference between him and the rest of the America. He is driving a truck on a lonely highway to pay for his tools, to show Iowa that he is the man: 220 bushels an acre of corn harvested this year. The same corn that might bring him close to a bankruptcy next year. Sound familiar?
Don't we all own some tool that we paid way to much for. Had to take an extra job for summer to pay if off, or maxing out the "pay for the collage expenses" credit card for the newest laptop.
Some of us are lucky to have parents who've bought all these great gadgets for us, for them its no worries. It might be your dad, lonely at night on the highway of debt.

b.
I am sure men are as concerned with their weight and body shape as women. They are probably not as obsessed with the desire to be skinny as cover models, but men like to be in shape. What I mean here, is the muscular image. This desire is fulfilled mainly in the gym and the healthy diet is a big part of muscle building. The men have to watch very carefully their carbohydrates intake and try to ensure that their bodies receive the right amount of a protein.

One of the most stereotypical male concerns is the hair lost. I get it, even women are obsessed with their partner's hair line. Pretending to kiss them with passion, while pulling on the guys hair to make sure there is a plenty of nourished locks. The next thing is to meet the father, to get an idea of how far this hair loss can go.

Well enough jokes, this is a serious subject. One that can bring an interesting discussion to the class, especially while reading The Omnivore's Dilemma. Hopefully we will realize how important the food we eat is. It nourishes our beautiful hair, it builds our bones, it shapes our bodies. Our skin is the mirror of our diet.

Even though the most pressure comes from the outside, we can be in charge of our image by treating it as an inside job. Eat healthy and your body will thank you by representing itself in a new light.

Blog #4

" My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters." ( Asimov,1)
"Understanding doesn't mean that you can suddenly speak the language. ( Sedaris, 295)

In my opinion, Asimov realized that even though his academic intelligence is high, when presented with a simple joke he could not untangle it. When one person is taken out of their element of "academic training" and introduced to common intelligence, or street smarts, they will sometimes perform poorly.(Asimov,1)
My conclusion of Asimov piece is this: Do educated people forget about the human element?

On the other hand, Sedaris's approach to the same issue is through a foreign language. Being taken out of someones world of words is an important part of his short story. But in Sedaris's case the embarrassment and associate feelings are much bigger part of the issue. Though the inability to express yourself has nothing to do with your intelligence, your limitation "in terms of vocabulary" make you "appear less then sophisticated".( Sedaris, 292)

I agree that the frustration and constant search for right words to express your thoughts and feelings can make us question that intelligence is not absolute.

Blog #3

a. " A corollary is that when a male and female are pictured in a euphoric state, the female is likely to be exhibiting a more expansive expression than is the male, which in turn fits with the argument already made and illustrated that in our society women smile more then men- both in real scenes and in commercially contrived ones."(Goffman,69)

This is a significant image that women and men have been stereotyped by for a long time. Picturing the male as the one that smiles less, represents his lack of emotions, or his choice to conceal them. Men have been told to withdraw from emotions and the advertisement encourages this behavior. Which, in my opinion is wrong.

b. " To add insult to injury, the rhetoric of feminism has been adopted to help advance and justify the industries in anti-aging and body-alternation." (Bordo, 152)

This is definitely an insult. To use feminism to advertise face -lifts and implants or liposuction is very misleading, dangerous, and injurious. This is a misrepresentation on an entire movement of women that had fought for women's rights and Independence. To use their slogans, " I am doing it for me", or, "taking charge" is absurd and sending the wrong message about what feminism is to a new generation of women.

c. The image of male and female change a whole lot since Goffman's article. The people that work in advertising and think about how to sell products and produce new commercials went to collages and universities that taught them to look at the old commercials and stereotypes in the same critical way we are learning to. They had to rethink the advertisement approach.

This lead to a shift in advertisements. The female and male are not as gender defined, their roles less black and white. The viewer can, sometimes, come to his or her own conclusion. This can leave the viewer confused-- its harder for them to choose what they want to be. Their gender role is less defined in the ad.

Where it used to be that ones defined role in society was important in order to identify with the product being sold, this new form of advertising leads people to believe that if they buy the product their role will become more defined.

Blog #2

a. " But if who I am matters less maybe what I say will matter more. "( McCloud, 37)

In my opinion, this is an interesting statement.

In the case of McCloud's comic , I paid so little attention to the messenger .My fascination was with the message itself. When McCloud decided to draw himself more in detail on page 36, I started to focus on him. Immediately I wondered to myself: Is he from Seattle? What a strange thought. It was as if he became a person, an individual I started to wonder about. This distracted me from the message.
Isn't this similar to the public relationship with famous movie stars? A big movie star's presence is enough for me to go see a movie. I might not know anything about the content of that particular movie, but if Brad Pit and Robert Redford are in it I'll go. My unconscious assumption is that the movie will be interesting and worth seeing. The popularity of the messenger helps me make the decision or choice to participate in some event, but also it can become a major distraction from the message that is being presented. The character portrayed by the actor or actress should overshadow their public persona. Or their public personality will overshadow the character.

b. Logical fallacy: Katie Couric reports on Iraq war every week, she knows a lot about the war. The assumption that Katie Couric knows everything about the war is based on her job as an anchor. Just because she reads the news from the teleprompter doesn't necessarily say anything of her knowledge ,or luck of it, about any given subject.

c.If ever there was an idea custom-made for Jay Leno monologue, this was it: All detainees at Guantanamo bay do receive universal health care. Isn't that like giving bail out loans to big corporate banks while letting the small business fail? Whatever happened to federal judgement?

I happened to sympathize with the choice to provide health care for everyone, even for people who might not have respect for another human life. I believe health care is a basic human right.

Rhetoric

Foss defines rhetoric as " the human use of symbols to communicate."(Foss,4)
She further breaks down the definition into three dimensions. "Humans" Foss claims are " the creators", "symbols" are vehicles of rhetoric. Finally the communication is "the purpose of rhetoric".(Foss, 4)

While reading Foss, I was reminded how the power of rhetoric plays a role in ones own life.
When I was a little girl I didn't know who the writer Vaclav Havel was. He was not allowed to publish his "artifacts" in my little communist state of Czechoslovakia.(Foss, 7)
I found out about him in November 1989 , the day of his first public speech after 20 years of silence and imprisonment. He was speaking to a demonstration of young university students.
Havel's art of rhetoric made the crowd of people yearn for change. His daily speeches in Prague's Venceslav Square influenced more students and citizens to show up at demonstrations the next day. This was the start of the Velvet Revolution.
His use of right "symbols", emotions, and his great humble personality made this revolution a peaceful one. Havel was able to mobilize millions of Czechs and Slovaks to non-violent protest against Communist leadership.
His mix of right words and good timing changed him from prisoner to president.

Vaclav Havel's rhetoric became the symbol of my freedom. The emotions of those fall days still live with me. I can here the sound of keys jingling and see the tears of happiness in my father's eyes. If this would be a different speaker, using careless rhetoric, the Velvet Revolution might not have happened. It scares me what I would be writing if it hadn't.



Definitions of Rhetoric :



"...rhetoric is a combination of the science of logic and of the ethical branch of politics..."
( Aristotle.The Art of Rhetoric)

"skill in the effective use of speech" (http://mw1.meriam-webster.com/dictionary/rhetoric)