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".