Graf #10

        I’m sure I’m not the only one that’s ever met a very, opinionated elderly person.  They’ve been doing things the same way for decades, and aren’t about to change now.  If you’re doing something the wrong way, they will be SURE to inform you of it, and to correct said behavior.  And correct they will.  We had a French-Canadian woman working on our farm just like that.  She was a bit of a manager at heart if you know what I mean.  And when we ran our piece-rate potato picking crew she sure would let her managing colors fly.  She made it her job whether she was asked to or not.     

        Raised French-Canadian in my area meant you were thrown into two languages at once right off the bat.  And for Peurette that led to an incredible understanding of French, along with the ability to navigate English relatively well.  Although for all of those young middle school potato pickers I’m sure it was rather difficult to navigate instruction barked by a hot tempered older woman with a heavy French accent.  And that’s what she did, bark, whether the owner was there or not.  Always throwing in a spare word here or there so fast and slurred nobody could understand it.  But you got the gist of it anyways, and you got to work. 

        All except one young boy named Shelby.  He was a rather rambunctious young man that knew just how to get the others going, Peurette especially.  If the pickers were throwing potatoes or rocks, you knew who started it.  And if a group of boys were digging into their lunches two hours early, you could pretty well tell who sparked such a great idea.  Peurette caught onto this, and tried to nip it in the butt, but was rather unsuccessful.  So occasionally you would hear odd utterances come from her that she had saved for just those “special occasions”.  On one occasion she seemed to have had enough, and finally confronted Shelby.  Shelby of course played the part of a smart mouth marvelously, and over the next few minutes unknowingly unraveled Peurette’s very last fuse.  That was it, she finally blew it.  That moment I had never heard so much French, so fast.  She started to say it under her breath, but towards the end of her rant you could clearly hear her as she stormed back to the work trailer.  While that may not have been the correct solution, it did however turn out that that was the last day that Shelby’s mother allowed him to show up for work.  Now whether or not his fun new vocabulary that he took home and demonstrated to his mother had anything to do with it, we’ll probably never know.  But to this day I still give Peurette props for her excellent French fluency, and the headaches she saved all of us that year.     

Graf # 13 Cause Reaction

         All the essays here seem to have some sort of personal touch that is easily definable.  A part of the author is invested into the work, giving it an extra sense of meaning, no matter what the context is.  For example the first essay showed what true power jealousy can have over us.  What strange things it makes you do under all the right, or wrong, circumstances.  The second was easy.  It's the author's love of dance that allows the entire experience to be laid out with incredible detail.  It makes for a story where you feel as if you were right on stage beside all those other birds, looking out over the crowds of parents hoping you don't forget the steps.  With sports on the other hand, sometimes it takes more for me to get in the shoes of the author.  But I know what he's trying to accomplish here.  He's trying to portray the feeling of anxiety, nervousness, and natural high that you get from having "your" team somehow overcome some impeding doom and win the game.  How many movies like that have you seen?  And now for the last essay.  Here it's obvious where the story is trying to lead you.  He wants to show you, in ever way he knows, how absolutely amazing this girl is. How she makes the author feel whenever she's around.  That is a genuine feeling that the other is trying to portray in his work.  And although he may not have the method down exactly, we still are very aware of his intentions.  Unfortunately in this case it doesn't make for a very interesting read.

Graf #3

The Bachelor Pad, and the pink enameled counter in it where we prepare food.  Its residents are listed sweeping left to right:

• Small black coffee pot, half full, fresh brew.
• Black Kitchenaide blender, missing important top cover piece…
• Second small coffee pot, white, freshly empty. 
• Gorilla ® duct tape roll
• Jar of honey (cover off)
• Microwave with various phone numbers scribbled on it
• Foil, bags, stretch wrap and take-out menus on top of microwave
• Folger’s half gallon can of Breakfast brew
• The Weekly and Organic Maine newspapers on microwave
• Roommate’s glass bottle of Japanese soda. (Melon flavored)
• Breadman Ultimate Plus (pride & joy)
• Cheap set of cutlery in a chestnut wood block
• George Foreman Grill (1’ wide model)
• Half loaf of homemade bread (on cutting board)

For the amount of coffee this person drinks, they should definitely upgrade to bigger coffee pot and maybe even beans and a grinder.  Save them some time and environment.  Cluttered microwave, numbers scribbled around.  Do they spend a lot of time at the microwave?  A sort of command station/hot pocket prep area?  Who knows, but moving right, but bread man tells me something.   And along with the George Foreman grill, tells even more.  This fellow is either super lazy, or super-efficient.  They have a machine to make you bread from scratch and an indoor grill surface that is super easy to clean.  The only other thing they need is a place to store their fresh bread so it doesn’t go stale.  Clean up boys, or the girls won’t ever want to come back over.   

Graf #4

Put a small part of you in everything you write.  That’s the big point here.  Invest yourself in the topic.  Find some aspect of the subject that interests you, and spread.  It begs you to become motivated.  To invest in the words you put down, to make you ask questions and look for the answers.  To review your entire work multiple times, and throughout the entire writing process too.  Checking for flow, and making sure the topic matter still applies.  Seeing what ideas are still floating around, undocumented, and also just a general question of “Is this work, me?”.  Also knowing it’s not just an indifferent teacher reviewing my work for a letter grade, I think has changed what I now call acceptable writing.  The new addition of peer input has done a lot to curve my view.  Now it’s more than just my grade on the line I’m working for, I’m also maintaining a certain reputation, a writing reputation.   That all is just some of the ways I apply the advice covered to mold my writing technique as best I can for this class, and life in general. 

Graf #12

We pull in, late as usual.  Everyone else is already all unpacked.  Gear is being organized, tents raised, fire being prepped.  A faint saltwater odor lingers everywhere.  It’s foggy, it always is.  That doesn’t stop the fun though.  We greet everyone and chat for a while.  All gathered around the camp fire.  The smoke is thick, and always seems to chase one or another of us around the circle.  We don’t always mind though, it keeps the mosquitoes at bay.  Breakfast is on.  Bacon is always a staple, along with eggs, cocoa, bagels and cereal.  All hot food is being made on the cooking rack over wood flame.  Where else? it is Blackwoods after all. 

Graf #9 Object

I’m no rich old man, but I do tend to be frugal.  I want the best bang for my buck, and am willing to search out and get the best quality there is to get.  And for the amount of miles that I drive that had to be a Toyota, just had to be.  Fuel efficient, and with a super low level of repeat maintenance, I was sold.  My Toyota Corolla gets me around everywhere.  Now I wish like every other sane “American” to have my gas guzzler v8 tote me and my 7 empty seats around, but that’s just silly by today’s economic standards.  I have a farm 150 miles away that I have to get to year round, and numerous times.  Those two factors ended me up with a 1.8 liter that gets 35 mpg and a set of very nice quality snow tires.  All the while only having to pay nearly a third of what it would cost me to drive any of those big trucks the same distance. 

Graf #8

        Admit it, the name sounds corny.  I-search.  The idea is quite new to me.  A research paper, the topic of which the writer decides.  Something one would truly be interested in, and motivated to learn more about.  These are the criteria the paper follows.  You pick the topic of interest, think about what you want to learn, and go for it.  Learn, enrich, educate.  Find out so much information about the topic the professor is paying you to stop.  Pumping out page after page of personally motivated gold.  Well maybe not necessarily pages upon pages, but you get my drift.  A true joy to put together, this essay is still… different.  Here you don’t get assigned a stale, overused topic that has been written on so many times it looks as if you just copied the entire Wikipedia article down.  No, not here.  Here you can expand on knowledge you already have, researching questions that have been taunting you, at the back of your head for as long as you can remember.  Learning might actually be fun, if it’s something you want to know more about.  And that’s exactly what’s trying to be accomplished here.  A push in the right direction, a push towards educating oneself.  Enriching your own mind, smiling the whole time.  Who would have known this is what I should have expected when I signed up for a simple composition course.