Week 2

Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again.

–Chinese Inscription Cited by Thoreau in Walden

  Welcome back and Good day to you all.  I hope all is well, a yes!   

      In writing we seek some perspective to put our subject in, a stance or idea to frame it. The frame, which may be the topic sentence in a paragraph, or the thesis idea of the entire piece, tells a reader what to make of the subject, and shows your direction and approach to the subject.  Say the subject–the raw material–is some event we can't shake from memory, whether from childhood, adolescence, or our adult life. Something happened and the memory of it has been shedding a certain light and force. This subject (event, phenomenon, fact, call it what you will) must be interpreted, its shape discovered, framed, its meaning revealed (in so far as we can grasp it) in the writing we do about it. It's not easy, but that is the challenge.  A composition of even a single paragraph must organize itself around an idea, stated or implied; this is the thesis or topic idea. Ideally, each supporting sentence relates to the paragraph topic, alternating between the general ideas and specific supporting details, and the finished effect is of a unified, coherent, organized whole that fulfills a certain purpose.  Some of the most common means of organizing a paragraph include description, narration, illustration, comparison/contrast, process, cause and effect, definition, and argument. 

Read the following examples, whose topic ideas, where explicit, are in italic letters, and think about how the authors have organized the material:

There is a minute and twenty-one seconds left on the clock in the 2002 Super Bowl, and the score is tied.  The New England Patriots have the ball on their own 17-yard line.  They are playing against the heavily favored St. Louis Rams.  They have no time-outs left.  Everyone assumes that the Patriots will kneel down and take the game into overtime.  That, after all, is the prudent thing to do.  “You don’t want to have a turnover,” says John Madden, one of the television broadcast’s commentators.  “They just let time expire.”

The game was never supposed to be this close.  The Rams had been favored by fourteen points over the Patriots, which made this the most lopsided Super Bowl ever played.  The potent Rams offense­–nicknamed the “Greatest Show on Turf”–led the league in eighteen different statistical categories and outscored their opponents 503 to 273 during the regular season.  Quarterback Kurt Warner was named the NFL’s Most Valuable Player, and running back Marshall Faulk had won the NFL Offensive Player of the Year award.  The Patriots, meanwhile, had been hamstrung by injuries, losing Drew Bledsoe, their star quarterback, and Terry Glenn, their leading wide receiver.  Everyone was expecting a rout.

But now, with just a minute remaining, Tom Brady–the second string quarterback for the Patriots–has a chance to win the game.  Over on the Patriot’s sidelines, he huddles in conversation with Bill Belichick, the Patriots’ head coach, and Charlie Weis, the offensive coordinator.  “It was a ten-second conversation,” Weis remembered later.  “What we said is we would start the drive, and, if anything bad happened, we’d just run out the clock.”  The coaches were confident that their young quarterback wouldn’t make a mistake.

Brady jogs back to his teammates on the field.  You can see through his facemask that he’s smiling, and it’s not a nervous smile.  It’s a confident smile.  There are seventy thousand spectators inside the Superdome, and most of them are rooting for the Rams, but Brady doesn’t seem to notice.  After a short huddle, the Patriots clap their hands in unison and saunter toward the line of scrimmage.

Tom Brady wasn’t supposed to be here.  He was the 199^th pick in the 2000 draft.  Although Brady had broken passing records at the University of Michigan, most team scouts thought he was too fragile to play with the big boys.  The predraft report on Brady by Pro Football Weekly summarized the conventional wisdom:  “Poor build.  Very skinny and narrow.  Ended the ’99 season weighing 195 pounds, and still looks like a rail at 211.  Lacks great physical stature and strength.  Can get pushed down more easily than you’d like.”  The report devoted only a few words to Brady’s positive attribute:  “decision-making.”

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The quick decisions made by a quarterback on a football field provide a window into the inner workings of the brain.  In the space of a few frenetic seconds, before a linebacker crushes him into the ground, an NFL quarterback has to make a series of hard choices.  The pocket is collapsing around him–the pocket begins to collapse before it exists–but he can’t flinch or wince.  His eyes must stay focused downfield, looking for some meaningful sign amid the action, an open man on a crowded field.  Throwing the ball is the easy part.

                                                How We Decide, Jonathan Lehrer

Hanging in the trees, as if caught there, is a sickle of a moon.  Its wan light scatters shadows on the snow below, only obscuring further the forest that this man negotiates now as much by feel as by sight.  He is on foot and on his own save for a single dog, which runs ahead, eager to be heading home at last.  All around, the black trunks of oak, pine, and poplar soar into the dark above the scrub and deadfall, and their branches form a tattered canopy overhead.  Slender birches, whiter than the snow, seem to emit a light of their own, but it is like the coat of an animal in winter:  cold to the touch and for itself alone.  All is quiet in this dormant, frozen world.  It is so cold that spit will freeze before it lands; so cold that a tree, brittle as straw and unable to contain its expanding sap, may spontaneously explode.  As they progress, man and dog alike leave behind a wake of heat, and the contrails of their breath hang in pale clouds above their tracks.  Their scent stays close in the windless dark, but their footfalls carry and so, with every step, they announce themselves to the night.

Despite the bitter cold, the man wears rubber boots better suited to the rain; his clothes, too, are surprisingly light, considering that he has been out all day, searching.  His gun has grown heavy on his shoulder, as have his rucksack and cartridge belt.  But he knows this route like the back of his hand, and he is almost within sight of his cabin.  Now, at last, he can allow himself the possibility of relief.  Perhaps he imagines the lantern he will light and the fire he will build; perhaps he imagines the burdens he will soon lay down.  The water in the kettle is certainly frozen, but the stove is thinly walled and soon it will glow fiercely against the cold and dark, just as his own body is doing now.  Soon enough, there will be hot tea and a cigarette, followed by rice, meat, and more cigarettes.  Maybe a shot or two of vodka, if there is any left.  He savors this ritual and knows it by rote.  Then, as the familiar angles takes shape across the clearing, the dog collides with a scent as with a wall and stops short, growling.  They are hunting partners and the man understands:  someone is there by the cabin.  The hackles on the dog’s back and on his own neck rise together.

 Together, they hear a rumble in the dark that seems to come from everywhere at once.

                          – The Tiger:  A True Story of Vengeance and Survival,  by John Vaillant

Why bother?  That really is the big question facing us as individuals hoping to do something about climate change, and it’s not an easy one to answer.  I don’t know about you, but for me the most upsetting moment in An Inconvenient Truth came long after Al Gore scared the hell out of me, constructing an utterly convincing case that the very survival of life on earth as we know it is threatened by climate change.  No, the really the dark moment came during the closing credits, when we are asked to . . . change our light bulbs.  Tat’s when it got depressing.  The immense disproportion between the magnitude of the problem Gore had described and the puniness of what he was asking us to do about it was enough to sink your heart.                                                

                                                                                          (Michael Pollan  “Why Bother?”)

                                                                                                                                                

            Journeys are the midwives of thought.  Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships, or trains.  There is an almost quaint correlation between what is before our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads:  large thoughts at times requiring large views, and new thoughts, new places.  Introspective reflections that might otherwise be liable to stall are helped along by the flow of landscape.  The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do; the task can be as paralyzing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.  Thinking improves when parts of the mind are given other tasks—charged with listening to music, for example, or following a line of trees. The music or the view distracts for a time that nervous, censorious, practical part of the mind which is inclined to shut down when it notices something difficult emerging in consciousness, and which runs scared of memories, longings and introspective or original ideas, preferring instead the administrative and the impersonal.

            —Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel

Everything is changing. . . . This is a prediction I can make with absolute certainty. As human beings, we are constantly in a state of change. Our bodies change every day. Our attitudes are constantly evolving. Something that we swore by five years ago is now almost impossible for us to imagine ourselves believing. The clothes we wore a few years back now look strange to us in old photographs. The things we take for granted as absolutes, impervious to change, are, in fact, constantly doing just that. Granite boulders become sand in time. Beaches erode and shape new shorelines. Our buildings become outdated and are replaced with modern structures that also will be torn down. Even those things which last thousands of years, such as the Pyramids and the Acropolis, also are changing. This simple insight is very important to grasp if you want to be a no-limit person, and are desirous of raising no-limit children. Everything you feel, think, see, and touch is constantly changing.
–Wayne Dyer, What Do You Really Want For Your Children?

Starting about one million years ago, the fossil record shows an accelerating growth of the human brain. It expanded at first at the rate of of one cubic inch of additional gray matter every hundred thousand years: then the growth rate doubled; it doubled again; and finally it doubled once more. Five hundred thousand years ago the rate of growth hit its peak. At that time, the brain was expanding at the phenomenal rate of ten cubic inches every hundred thousand years. No other organ in the history of life is known to have grown as fast. –Robert Jastrow, Until the Sun Dies

The cold phone outside a shopping center in Bigfork, Montana, from which I called a friend in the West Indies one winter when her brother was sick; the phone on the wall of the concession stand at Redwood Pool, where I used to stand dripping and call my mom to come pick me up; the sweaty phones used almost only by men in the hallway outside the maternity ward at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York; the phone by the driveway of the Red Cloud Indian School in South Dakota where I used to talk with my wife while priests in black slacks and white socks chatted on a bench nearby; the phone in the old wood-paneled phone booth with leaded glass windows in the drugstore in my Ohio hometown–each one is as specific as a birthmark, a point on earth unlike any other.  Recently I went back to New York City after a long absence and tried to find a working pay phone.  I picked up one receiver after another without success.  Meanwhile, as I scanned down the long block, I counted half a dozen or more pedestrians talking on their cell phones.  (Ian Frazier  “Dearly Disconnected”)

What my mother never told me was how fast time passes in adult life. I remember, when I was little, thinking I would live to be at least as old as my grandmother, who was dynamic even at ninety-two, the age at which she died. Now I see those ninety-two years hurtling by me. And my mother never told me how much fun sex could be, or what a discovery it is. Of course, I'm of an age when mothers really didn't tell you much about anything. My mother never told me the facts of life. –Joyce Susskind, "Surprises in a Woman's Life"

The crocuses and the larch turning green every year a week before the other and the pastures red with uneaten sheep's placenta's and the long summer days and the newmown hay and the wood pigeon in the morning and the cuckoo in the afternoon and the corncrake in the evening and the wasps in the jam and the smell of gorse and the look of the gorse and the apples falling and the children walking in the dead leaves and the larch turning brown a week before the others and the chestnuts falling and the howling winds and the sea breaking over the pier and the first fires and the hooves on the road and the consumptive postman whistling "The Roses Are Blooming in Picardy" and the standard oil lamp and of course the snow and to be sure the sleet and bless your heart the slush and every fourth year the February debacle and the endless April showers and the crocuses and then the whole bloody business starting all over again.  –Samuel Beckett, Wait

There is but one way to celebrate a plump ripe plum–polish it on your shirt, see your face in the silvery black shine, then open wide, lock your lips on the skin, sink your teeth into the sensuous center, suck in the flesh, slurp up the juices.  Ah!  The purple of it all.

–James Ciletti, Ode to a Ripe Plum

Note:  Some paragraphs, particularly ones descriptive or narrative have no directly stated topic idea, but the idea is implied, the purpose of the paragraph clear, and the development shows unity and coherence.  The term coherence refers to the orderly, intelligible arrangement of sentences, phrases, and words.  Repetition of key words and use of transitions are two ways of creating coherence.  Transitions  are words and phrases that clarify the connections between thoughts, for example:  now, then, after all, finally, for example, in the meantime, indeed, thus, likewise, similarly, on the one hand, on the other hand, naturally, of course, in conclusion, etc.  

Description brings the sensory world before us, as we see it, hear it, smell it, feel it, taste it, know it.  Typically, the writer strives to create what is called a dominant impression or effect, from the array of supporting details.  The focus and angle of view are controlled and manipulated to put such an impression across, be the subject a person, place, thing, or situation.

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Today's writing focuses on description. At times description stands alone, but it always enhances and particularizes all kinds of writing.  Think images–of people, things, places–sometimes very narrowly focused and detailed, sometimes sketched in, impressionistic and evocative of some overarching feeling, impression, atmosphere, or mood.  Fine description begins with close observation of your subject, physically or mentally.  Some of us have vivid recall of certain subjects, and some prefer to study first-hand, in the here and now, the world as it offers itself to us.

The places we remember from the past, those we see right before us, or those we see in looking into the future– the real and imagined landscapes of our journeys– may interest you. What was it like to be there? What did you see? hear? touch? smell? taste? feel? Were you in a mansion, on a mountain, walking a boulevard or navigating narrow city streets? Were you in Morocco or Miami? Was your neighborhood a place where kids played in the street and dogs barked excitedly, where sometimes the flood waters rose to knee height and frogs and snakes made wild companions? Did folks sit on the porch, or did they live behind privacy gates and drive fancy cars? Can you describe your home of homes? And how does it compare to other homes, other places? What makes the place distinct? What gives it character? What kinds of life, what kinds of people and things and what jobs does one find there? If you consulted a map, what would the map reveal or tell?

Writing about place may take the form of a travel journal or memoir; or it may be a guide to those seeking to discover some part of the world from an armchair at home or in advance of making an actual visit. Often people write about the landscapes or cityscapes that they have come to love through long connection. We may become seemingly indifferent to where we live, no longer noticing the particulars, the everyday features and patterns. Sometimes we have to go away to start seeing the world around us. We are nonetheless surrounded by objects; the elemental trees, clouds, sky, rocks, rivers, and fields; and the constructed world of houses, classrooms, malls, towns, and roadways with all that lies beside.  We also remember certain people, certain things, whose presence before us or in memory is closely associated with the events of our life. 

The following excerpt is from Mark Twain's Autobiography:  

    As I have said, I spent some time of every year at the farm until I was twelve or thirteen years old.  The life which I led there with my cousins was full of charm, and so is the memory of it yet.  I can call back the solemn twilight and mystery of the deep woods, the earthy smells, the faint odors of the wild flowers, the sheen of rain-washed foliage, the rattling clatter of drops when the wind shook the trees, the far-off hammering of woodpeckers and the muffled drumming of wood pheasants in the remoteness of the forest, the snapshot glimpses of disturbed wild creatures scurrying through the grass–I can call it all back and make it as real as it ever was, and as blessed.  I can call back the prairie, and its loneliness and peace, and a vast hawk hanging motionless in the sky, with his wings spread wide and the blue of the vault showing through the fringe of their end feathers.  I can see the woods in their autumn dress, the oaks purple, the hickories washed with gold, the maples and the sumachs luminous with crimson fires, and I can hear the rustle make by the fallen leaves as we plowed through them. . . .

Here is another Twain excerpt:  I still kept in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me.  A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal.

And here is Alain de Botton writing about Gustave Flaubert's fascination with camels:  "One of the finest things is the camel," wrote Flaubert from Cairo.  "I never tire of watching this strange beast that lurches like a donkey and sways its neck like a swan.  It s cry is something that I wear myself out trying to imitate–I hope to bring it back with me, but it's hard to reproduce:   a rattle with a kind of tremulous gargling as an accompaniment."  Writing to a family friend a few months after the he left Egypt, he listed the things that had most impressed him in that country:  the pyramids, the temple at Karnak, the Valley of the Kings, some dancers in Cairo, a painter named Hassan el Bilbeis.  "But my real passion is the camel (please don't think I'm joking):  nothing has a more singular grace thatn this melancholic animal.  You have to see a group of them in the desert when they advance single file across the horizon, like soldiers; their necks stick out like those of ostriches, and they keep going, going. . . ."

    Why did Flaubert so admire the camel?  Because he identified with its stoicism and ungainliness.  He was touched by its sad expression and its combination of awkwardness and fatalistic resilience.

–from The Art of Travel

Writing Assignment (#2): Writing descriptively means bringing to a reader's mind the particular aspects that define the essence of your subject––be it a place or setting, a person, or a thing. We stand on whatever ground, sit on whatever chair, stroll whatever paths or sidewalks, swim the river or climb that tree, eat those berries, smell those blossoms, marvel at the moon, swelter in the heat and the dust of late summer, or shiver in the icy blasts that make street corners formidable.  Images are all around as the faces and the figures of every created or imagined thing.  

       So, in 350 words or more, conjure a precise and compelling portrait of a place, person and/or thing) you know well.  Use both objectively observed details, and subjective impressions and responses.  You may adopt a stationary or fixed observer perspective, or you may opt for that of the moving observer. Underline your thesis idea if it is stated, or type it out at the bottom of the page if it is implicit (clearly suggested but nowhere actually stated).   Remember, your essay should carry a point!

Title the essay. Double space the lines and tab indent for each paragraph.

Topic Suggestions:

Describe a place where you found or find refuge, a sense of peace and well-being.

Describe anything  you find stimulating in some specific way or ways.

Describe the neighborhood you grew up in and the influence it had on you.

Describe someone  you have come to know familiarly and the effect he or she has on you.

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SENTENCE TYPES

Sentence Type 1: The simple sentence has one subject and one predicate, the base of which is always a verb or verb phrase. And in English, the subject usually comes up front, followed by the verb and other predicate elements such as direct and indirect objects. This subject-verb combo is called a clause, an independent clause, because it expresses a grammatically complete, stand-alone thought.  Examples follow here:

Jesus wept. 

Style has meaning.

Choices resonate.

Nuts! (that is nuts, this is nuts, he is nuts, etc., where "that", "this", "he" are the subjects and "is" the verb, with "nuts" describing the situation or person, as an adjective or subject complement).

What is the subject in each of the three preceding sentences?  Jesus.  Style.  Choices.  And the verbs?  Wept and has and resonate, and some form of the "be" verb":  is, was, are, were . . .

And in the following?

The house is surrounded by razor wire.

He and I fight too often. We cannot be good for one another. 

After spring sunset, mist rises from the river, spreading like a flood.

From a bough, floating down river, insect song.  (Sentence fragment here . . . no verb).

They slept. 

The girl raised the flag. 

Note:   inverted syntax order: Subject follows the verb instead of preceding it.  Lovable he isn't. This I just don't understand. Tall grow the pines on the hills.

Normal order: A fly is in my soup. With an expletive (which delays the subject) it looks like this: There is a fly in my soup.

Sentence type 2: The compound sentence has at least two independent subject and verb combinations or clauses, and no dependent clauses. Each independent clause is joined by means of some conjunction or coordinating punctuation:

Autumn is a sad season, but I love it anyway.
Name the baby Huey, or I'll cut you out of my will.
The class was young, eager, and intelligent, and the teacher delighted in their presence.
The sky grew black, and the wind died; an ominous quiet hung over the whole city.
My mind is made up; however, I do want to discuss the decision with you.

Any of the seven short coordinating conjunctions can be used before the comma to join independent clauses:  for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so:  they can be remembered as FANBOYS.

*A semi-colon (;) must be used before adverbial conjunctions joining independent clauses:  however, indeed, therefore, thus, in fact, moreover, in addition, consequently, still, etcetera.

Sentence Type 3: The complex sentence is composed of one independent clause and at least one dependent clause.  

My man left me, though it was I who begged him to go.

Those who live in glass houses should not cast stones.

Many people believe that God does not exist.

Sentence Type 4:  The compound-complex sentence has at least two independent clauses and one dependent clause.

As I waited for the bus, the sun beat down all around me, and I shivered in my thoughts.

Because she said nothing, we assumed that she wanted nothing, but her mother knew better.

She and her sister Amina are dancers, and they work at parties around town when they can. 

While John shopped for groceries, two armed men forced their way into his home; fortunately, his wife and children were away.

Examples of subordinating conjunctions––those used in from of dependent clauses–– include the following:  because, that, which, who, when, while, where, wherever, though, as though, although, since, as, if, as if, unless, et al .

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Grammar Work: Verb conjugations, tense forms and usage. Review the material on verb forms and use at the following URLs: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/601/1/ http://owl.english.purdue.edu/exercises/2/22, http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/539/07/, and http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/599/1/.