“Shooting Dad” Dialogue

a.     What is the significance of the title?

The title, "Shooting Dad" refers to the ending of her personal story, where author Sarah Vowell talks about literally shooting her dad out into the hills. She doesn't mean while hes alive; Shooting his ashes out of his homemade cannon is something he really wants to do when he dies. The title of this story really brings out passion  to her story. After all the disagreement, and differences she has between her father, shooting her dad's ashes out into the hills is something that is going to be very special to her. 
Her father's life is all about guns. ALthough she hates guns, Sarah later finds out that they are very commen people. They both have their own type of obessive attitude, hers just is music instead. But thats not the only thing in common. She later finds out that she loves the canon he made, and it's something they can shoot together. This part of the story really puts a nice conclusion on it and then It draws in the significance of the title when she notes that her father wants to be shot out of the cannon.

Writing Topic: Rules for Writers Chapter 3

This chapter was the most important for me in writing essays. Although writing the rough draft is something I am not good at it is the revisions and editing that i need to work on if I want my essays to be good. This chapter starts out with a good point; While your writing your rough draft many things change and become unorganized over time. This can include your thesis, your outline of the whole thing and maybe even your opinion on what your writing. That is why it is a good to revise it and have the ending product make sense with your new information and restructured thesis. The chapter has a good checklist to follow when revising. It brings up good questions too consider, like Is my thesis clear?, or Are the Paragraphs too long?. It also brings up proofreading. Proofreading is like the brain's version of Word's grammer or spellcheck tool. You have to slowly read over the whole essay and make sure the spelling is all write, the format is all good and the sentences make sense. After all this is over we should already have a polished final draft essay that makes sense and follows our thesis statement.
Hopefully after this chapter my revisions will go better. I really want my thesis to make sense with my essay, and for some reason my thesis always changes over time. I think revisions will help make my thesis better, along with the entire essay.

“Coming Home Again” Dialogue

e.      Choose a quote from the reading and share your critical thinking in response.

"My going to such a place was part of my mother's not so secret plan to change my character, which she was worried was becoming too much like hers" Page 12

This quote from the Dialog, "Coming Home Again" really reached out to me because it made me feel for the mother a little bit. It takes a lot of modesty to admit flaws in your own character, and it also shows love when your worried about your son even becoming you. I look up to that kind of humble, non-self interested act. I hear a lot about parents sending their children to places so that they can BECOME more like their parents, but I have never heard it this way. It makes me wonder what kind of mistakes the mother has made, and why she would not want her son to face them. As I read on I notice the author, or the son of the mother, notes that she had already been introduced to "sloth and vanity". This could be hinting that his mother has the characteristics of sloth and vanity, and that she is afraid of her son becoming like her. From the beginning I can see how she ties in sloth with the fact her mother is constrained to an electronic pump, but she can't help that at all. 
The author is incredibly clever, by figuring out what his mom was thinking. The good thing is that it worked. The school he went to did change his character. "She was right of course, and while i was there I would falter more than a few times, academically and otherwise." This meant that the mother thought if she sent her son to a tough school, it would keep him from becoming vain and a sloth. He described the school as "proving his mettle" or courage and strength.

Writing Topic: Rules for Writers chapter 2

This weeks reading is all about writing rough drafts. In the previous chapter we had to learn how to come up with a thesis statement and outline an essay. This is the next step after that. It talks mainly about the structure of rough drafts and hooking things to your thesis statement. It goes further into detail about your introduction that you would write.
I learned that it is a good strategy to start out your essay with a sentence to get the readers attention. This could be stating an interesting fact, starting out with an interesting question that would make the reader think, or even open it up with a shocking story. After that it is important to make a clear thesis statement. This statement has to explain the main points and opinions of your essay. From what i read in this book, a thesis is usually a statement followed by backed up examples that will later be explained in the rest of the essay. After your done with your introduction, your body paragraphs are suppose to be the examples that support your thesis, going into full detail and bringing up true statistics and facts. The conclusion ties it all together and summarizes your whole essay.

I really took a lot from this chapter because essay writing is one of my weakest writing skill. I am very bad at organizing my thoughts, and when I want to get out an idea, it does not come out on paper like it should. I have a tendency to jumble everything about the topic onto paper all at once, and when I try to organize it to match my thesis statement, which is hard for me to write in the first place, everything starts to make even less sense. This chapters points about organization really showed me really what an essay should look like. It should be organized by a hook, a thesis statement, a body backing it up, and  a conclusion that ties it together.

Essay 1: Rough Draft

This image depicts Seattle city in the nighttime, which is a very great scene to me. Seattle is the farthest I have been from my house, which is unfortunate because I have always been interested in the city. To me a city is just a giant human culture theme park. It is filled with so many interesting and different ways of life and always looks amazing. It looks even more amazing at night. My visit to Seattle city was exciting, and it is the reason why I love the urban life. This image really reminds me of one of the reasons why I am interested in this lifestyle. Even at night a place like this manages to look so busy, with lights scattering the city.

            I was about ten when I first came to Seattle. It was a trip to visit my mom’s side of the family, and it was for thanksgiving. During the winter Seattle can be either near freezing or very rainy. Although usually rainy weather can be a very nasty site down here in California, for some reason I loved the look of it in the city. We went to a lot of places there including the space needle and an underground mall, which had one of the oldest comic books I’ve ever seen in a store. After that we visited the gum wall which was a huge brick wall in an alleyway entirely covered in gum. This was pretty gross but very interesting. By then it was nighttime. Right when it gets dark everything lights up and it’s almost like the city changes into a different place entirely. We went by a really small coffee shop and since it was cold we decided to go inside. I was very warm and cozy and the view of the freezing dark city through the window made me feel a lot cozier. This is the cozy feeling that really makes me feel like I belong in a busy city.

            In the city everything towers over you. Everything is big and you feel so much smaller. There are so many different sounds playing all at once. Cars are honking while at the same time a street performer is playing free form jazz. People are talking on cell phones while televisions inside stores play movies and advertisements. The city also had lots of different smells; the markets, thousands of cars, the restaurants, coffee shops and thousands of distinctive aromas that would take forever to list. Art is everywhere. You can see it through graffiti on walls, different posters and advertisements on billboards and in the way people dress. The amount of busy people is overwhelming. They are so busy they don’t even have time to say excuse me if they bump into you. This can be hard to appreciate, but it makes me feel like I’m in the middle of a land of very important people.

A lot of the places in the city had a style I now learned about called art deco. Art deco is the 60’s Aztec looking style shown in giant buildings. The whole town had an art deco feel to it, and to this day it is my favorite type of design. Everything is made up of triangles, squares lightening bolts and all kinds of straight lines in city buildings. It reminds me of jazz music, and a very rich style in the sense of big business. As complicated as it sounds it is a very simple style with lots of simple colors and negative space surrounding it.

My picture that I chose is really in the middle of the urban life that I like. Everything looks very cold, and there are lots of doors and alley ways and places to explore and it looks like it goes on forever. In the background big buildings cover the sky, and yellow and orange lights cover the picture, showing that millions of people are still up and busy. I can imagine living here, and being inside a building seeing this outside of my window would make me feel very comfortable, like I belong there.

Writing Topic: Rules for Writers chapter 1

        The first chapter of Rules for Writers shows a lot of reasons and ways to plan to write an essay or an analysis and to understand a reading assignment. For example, if you were going to write a research paper, to better understand the assignment, you could try observations and interviews. It's also better to understand why you are writing a research paper. The list in the book has a list of writing purposes like to inform or to persuade.
        It is also good to consider who your audience is. It can help you write your paper and to let your audience better understand what you are writing. I personally like this idea. If I can better understand who my audience is writing can go a lot easier. If i knew my paper would be read by audiences my age I would use analogies in my paper to things that a younger audience would understand. I will definitely use this when writing a research topic or an essay. This book gives many tools to use when trying to plan and express what you want to write. I thought the reading this week was very detailed and had a lot more writing tools than last week. I can definently use all of these to plan what i want to write.

a.      Why is a “smart Indian” dangerous?  Dangerous to whom? 

          
             From how I interpreted the reading, a "smart Indian" is dangerous to the students in the class because being smarter than  everyone in the class can cause jealousy. Jealousy is a dangerous thing for children. Kids who are jealous of other kids tease them, pick on them and hurt them. It says in the book that other kids would be mad at the author and tell him not to answer any questions from the teacher. Anyone different from a group can always be a dangerous thing in the real world.
           In society all around us difference is recognized as weird and unusual. Anything were aren't accustomed to seems weird and seems like it isn't supposed to happen. In his story it seems like he is pointing out that it wasn't normal to be as smart as he was when he was that age. It looked very unusual to other people and that can be dangerous.
          I think it was very important that he chose to have a higher education than the rest of them. It got him so much farther than they probably did and that is very important in an economy these days. I want to try and get the highest eduaction just so I will have more financial security in the future. I think education is one of the most important things human beings have. It makes us the smartest creatures in the world and through education most of lifes problems can be solved.