Writer's Blog Prompt #5: Letter to Future 110ers

The purpose of this post is to reflect on your writing experience this semester and to expand the audience of your blog. On the first day of class this quarter, you received a letter from one of last quarter's 110ers (printed from their blogs) in which they reflected on their experiences in this class. Guess what? It's your turn!! :)

Spend some time reflecting on your own experience as a writer, and look to your First-Day Writing Assignment and Blog Prompt #1 to help you remember your thoughts about writing and the course theme at the beginning of the quarter.

As you write the letter, think carefully about the audience of new 110ers and consider the following questions if you need guidelines:

• What do they need to know in order to be successful in the assignments?
• What did you do that worked well, and what would you do differently if you could do it again?
• What specific examples or stories from your experience this quarter might help illuminate your process as a writer?
  

The final post and 2+ responses are due to the Writer's Blogs by Tuesday, March 9 at 8:00pm. If you need to revisit the grading criteria, see the post called "Writer's Blogs: How They Work" or email me with questions. :)

Happy blogging!

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My WB #4

When I was 23 years old, I went to my parents' house for a weekend. My sister and her now-husband were there, and as we ate dinner the conversation turned to the meat. I don't remember what we were eating, but I remember that I started to talk about a recent problem I'd been having: meat was starting to gross me out. My brother-in-law commented that it didn't really sound like I enjoyed meat very much, and he asked me why I didn't just become a vegetarian. I had no answer for him, and by the time I went to bed that night, I'd decided to give it a try for a year.

Of course, for the first year I was actually a pescetarian (I ate fish/seafood, but no other kinds of meat), but since the only kind of seafood I've ever really liked is Salmon, I was basically a vegetarian who ate salmon too. I didn't think I'd make it a full year, to tell the truth. I mean, I've always loved my meat. Sausages, beef jerkey, pepperoni, hot dogs, hamburgers, bologna and cheese sandwiches, chicken nuggets...the list goes on. But then I started to think about it, and I realized that all the meats I really liked didn't really resemble the animals they came from in any way. I mean, come on: hot dogs? Who really knows what-all goes into those things anyway!!

Well, it turns out after a while I didn't even want salmon anymore. In fact, I remember the last meat I ever ate. It was in the springtime, less than a year after my initial decision to stop eating meat. Mike and I went to a restaurant in Sacramento called The Rusty Duck where I ate a delicious salmon fettuccine alfredo...and that was the last time I had meat. To this day, I can't figure out what did it. I don't miss meat, but I do sometimes wonder why I started getting so grossed out by meat in the first place....

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Writer's Blog Prompt #4: A Story About Food

That's right, it's time for a little bit of storytelling. In this blog post, tell us a story about you and food. This story can be serious, funny, ridiculous, suspenseful, happy, sad, or anything else you want. It can be as recent or far in the past as you want it to be. It is, for all intents and purposes, a more creative post.

The requirements of this post are that you focus on your audience and your use of tone/style, that you tell a compelling and (at least mostly) true story involving you and food, and that you write a focused blog post.

The final post and 2+ responses are due to the Writer's Blogs by Tuesday, March 2 at 8:00pm. If you need to revisit the grading criteria, see the post called "Writer's Blogs: How They Work" or email me with questions. :)

Happy blogging!

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My WB #3

The website I analyzed is the one from the High Fructose Corn Syrup commercials we talked about earlier this quarter: http://www.sweetsurprise.com/

The first thing I noticed about the site is its design. The graphics are all clearly intended to present a sense of wholesomeness...there are blue skies and green leaves and (perfect) yellow ears of corn. The layout is fairly simple and open, giving a kind of shout-out to simpler times. Then there are the photos...oh yes, the photos. On the first page alone, there is a short slideshow of pictures that cycles through. There are five photos total, and each photo is shown next to a statistic or quote that supports HFCS. All five photos feature freakishly happy children, and only two have adults (clearly parents) present who are 100% focused on the smiling children. Everyone's smiling and everyone's eating, and all the food is "wholesome" American food...pancakes with raspberries, sandwiches, fruit, and more fruit. In fact, there's fruit in every picture which sends the message that all these happy (and non-obese) people are eating natural sugars...and since the site's main purpose is to present HFCS as a natural sweetener, they seem to be sending that message by association (since fruit obviously contains natural sugars, but doesn't contain HFCS). They also clearly want their readers to think about the children, and how these "natural" sweeteners are good for them.

The site appears to be geared toward parents; there are 7 tabs at the top of the page, and the first one is "HFCS & Your Family" while the others boast "facts" and "science" and "news" and "experts" -- clearly they are using these documents and people to play on their readership's ethos (especially when it comes to their use of "experts" and scientific evidence). When a parent looks at a website and sees that there are facts, studies, scientific findings, and news articles, they're going to be more likely to believe that what they're reading is true. The site's entire design is dedicated to marrying logos and pathos -- the use of so many logos-heavy documents (FDA studies, scientific reports, etc.) in conjunction with so many pathos-laden photographs (there are more pretty, happy, healthy families and young professionals on each page) is clearly meant to convince the reader through multiple avenues that they should not be afraid of HFCS...that they should embrace it!

The site's title says it all. It's called "SweetSurprise.com: The Facts About High Fructose Corn Syrup." The site exists to "surprise" its readers with the "facts" about HFCS -- to show them how good it really is by using evidence that will allow them to refute the "myths" about HFCS and to give them the tools they need to prove to others that HFCS is a sweet surprise after all...a healthy and natural sweetener that every parent should be glad to spoon into their childrens' mouths without hestitation.

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Writer's Blog Prompt #3: Analysis of a Food Website

The goal of this prompt is to take a closer look at how evidence is presented for a public audience (as opposed to the academic evidence you looked at for the ARP Part II: SSA). In order to complete this prompt, you'll need to choose a website, blog, review, or online article dedicated to food that offers evidence aimed at persuading the public. Make sure you include a link to that site in your post so we can see what you're talking about!! :)

Once you've found your site, catalogue both the evidence presented by the source and the methods it uses to present its evidence. Make sure to focus closely on presentation techniques like graphic design, tone, word choice, associations made, etc. Review this evidence and craft a blog post about what you find credible and what you find suspect. A strong post will focus on analysis of the evidence and technique. As you analyze your thoughts, think about the language we've used during this course, such as logos/pathos/ethos. Translate the way you think about evidence on a daily basis into the language of rhetorical analysis.

The final post and 2+ responses are due to the Writer's Blogs by Tuesday, February 16 at 8:00pm. If you need to revisit the grading criteria, see the post called "Writer's Blogs: How They Work" or email me with questions. :)

Happy blogging!

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Food and Film @ the Wex

The Wexner Center's current film series is all about food -- its production, consumption, distribution, and more! Below, I've pasted the blurb from their website, and you can click HERE to see the film schedule.

 

Field & Screen: Films about Our Food

The food industry grows, processes, and distributes what we eat more cheaply and efficiently than at any point in history. However, many of these advancements have had serious negative impacts on our environment, the nutrition of our food, and the health of the general population. Field & Screen features some of the best recent documentaries to address these issues along with films that illustrate the wonderful pleasures that food offers us.

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My WB #2

I have one word for you, and I bet most of you have never heard it before. The word: Aebleskiver. What is it, you ask? In short, an aebleskiver is a Danish breakfast food that could be considered a pancake ball. (For a detailed explanation with photographs, visit the Solvang Restaurant's homepage. A short explanation: Solvang, CA, is a town 3 miles from where I grew up...it's the self-proclaimed Danish Capital of America founded by Danes in 1911, and the shops and restaurants reflect this heritage.)

This meal says several things. First, this is a dish you have to go to a very specific location to get. That indicates that it's a special dish, something eaten on not-so-ordinary occasions. It's also sweet. Like I said, the aebleskivers themselves are similar to pancakes in consistency and flavor, but they're also topped with raspberry jam and powdered sugar. This triple-sweetness indicates a certain palette in the eater...in my case, it's a blatant indication of my out-of-control sweet tooth. But wait, there's more: it's also a breakfast food. That means that a person who enjoys aebleskivers is a "breakfast person" as well. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean they're an early bird (although in my case that's true) since one can always have breakfast for any meal of the day, but since aebleskivers are breakfast food, it is logical to assume that the eater likes breakfast.

Aebleskivers are also definitively Danish. Of course, you can't assume that everyone who eats them is Danish (I'm not). However, this is a good indication that the eater is either Danish (or knows someone who is) or that they enjoy international cuisine. Since aebleskivers are usually served with medisterpolse (Danish sausage) and Danish mustard, the absence of these accouterments tells you that the eater doesn't eat a lot of meat (or in my case, none at all).

The misleading factor here is that the aebleskivers are not made or served with vegetables. I think it's unfair to assume that this lack of produce indicates anything about the eater. While the dish is fairly heavy, it is sweet and therefore not entirely compatible with vegetables. It does have a fruit (the raspberry jam), and that might be enough to indicate that the eater is not entirely unhealthy.

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