Investigating

We followed the directions almost dyeing when our driver got in death ally to into a furniture parking lot. This is where it was supposed to be but it was nowhere in sight. We get closer to a building that was separated from the other buildings in the parking lot. It didn’t look like a food bank, but we couldn’t tell what it was. We got close enough to read the sign and found that it was in fact the Food Bank. We walk through the doors and find ourselves in a cramped waiting area. There where seats lining a wall, bags of produce and birthday gift bags lined the others. It wasn’t at all what I had expected. We were immediately greeted by a volunteer and asked if she could help us. The boys lifted the bags of food that we had brought to donate. She led us to a small room that could have been a closet. She had us put the food on the scale. She then wrote our names and the weight of the food we had donated on a thank you paper. We asked if we could help out for an hour. She then led us to another room a little bigger than the other one. It had 5 freezers of meat and milk along the walls along with shelves of canned and boxed food. This was the room that they packed the individual bags they would give to families.

Quotes:

Their mission as Diane Albright, a volunteer, puts it is to "provide emergency food to those in need in the state college area and to support the network of food pantries in Centre County."

Craig Peery, a volunteer who has worked there for several years said, "They (the people) are always very grateful. Most places even in large cities are lucky if they have enough supplies to give out one can to people who come in, but here no one leaves with less than twenty-five pounds of food."

Megan Meister said, "Over the years, my family and I have faced financial difficulties, and the physical and mental relief that the Food Bank has given me and my family has been profound.”

Facts:

According to the “In order to use the State College Food Bank,” one must reside in the State College Area School District (or live in Julian and have a 692 phone number) AND have a referral from one of the agencies in the area such as the Community Help Center or the The Salvation Army of State College.

Did you know, despite being one of the most developed countries in the world, the U.S. generates about 34 million tons of wasted food each year according to United States Environmental Protection Agency. That amount of food takes up about 14.1% of our total solid waste.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, up to one-fifth of America’s food goes to waste, that would be approximately 130 pounds of food per person, which ends up in landfills throughout the United States.

Things I want to know more about:

Most of the people who go to food banks are not on welfare. If the government doesn’t think they need help then do they need help from the food bank?

Apparently in order to get food from a food bank you have to be referred. They will generally be approved for 8 visits in a 12 month period. He or she is able to determine when he can use those 8 visits, based on individual needs. Why is this set up this way?

Drinking at Penn State

The issue of this piece is that there is so much drinking and partying at campuses but it’s such a common thing and most people don’t see anything wrong with it. They wanted to find out why Penn State was the number one party school and what has been done to correct the drinking problem. They want to find out what it means to party, and why they party. They started this investigation because it’s so common to find students all over the nation binge drinking and there seems to be no end in sight. This story has no really specific audience but it will find more favor with none students. In a way it is also made for students and possible to help inform them of the effects their partying has on other people. The piece explained what went on during a typical night by being stationed on a porch down town. They also gave information about it being common for drunken college students to just walk in to someone’s house and fall asleep. Through the details of what some townies have witnessed such as the dangerous actions of throwing furniture off a roof then setting it on fire, peeing on people property, and just being obnoxiously loud they showed the problems the townies are having when dealing with the drunk kids.

They then explained the view point of alumni by going to a tailgate and getting interviews and explaining the atmosphere here. They decribied the university as being a community because of tailgating. They all come together to calibrate and cheer for their school football team. One person they interview said that if they got banned tailgates many of the alumni would be unhappy and stop giving the school money. They also went to many different stores near state college to see how drinking affected them. They gave lots of statics about economy and that state college had a high unemployment rate. Many of the store owners did not mind the drinking, which they made lots of money off of. Some were happy that the students were having a good time. One bar owner said that he liked being around them because the students have their whole future to look forward to where most bars have sad depressed people. Then they gave the statistic that state college is one of the safest communities but that state college spends a ton of money in the police department. In this report they included interviews that did a nice job of explain several different viewpoints. Then the interviewee would give statistics that were about the information the person in the interview had given. The interviewee would then further explain what the person they interview said.

The only reason people worry about drinking is because it is so dangerous to the student. The university has tried hard to stop the drinking issues but nothing seems to have a huge effect. After a death due to drinking, students at Penn State where given the message, if you’re going to drink, drink responsibly. The students did become more responsible by not allowing anyone to go home by themselves but the students did not consider drinking less. The efforts that Penn State makes toward drinking only lasts so long because the students leave by the thousands and more replaces them every year not remembering the deaths that had caused so much change. This report says that drinking at Penn State is a problem because it can result in death but the students do it and they love Penn State. They never want it to end. The University can only do so much. It is an ongoing battle that they have and are continuing to fight. I liked this report because it gave so many different viewpoints on the issue and lots of good facts. They way in which they reported their findings allowed you to follow on their journey of discovery and understand the heart of the problem.

Advice from Bird by Bird

After completing Bird by Bird the one thing that stuck with me and will continue to influence my writing is that I have to write a shitty first draft. Finding the words to get my point across is very difficult and challenging. Sometimes I just want to bang my head against my computer and see if something intelligent will come out but I have found that this rarely works. Her advice of just writing and not trying to make the first words perfect made me relies that I no longer had to bang my head. I can and should just write down whatever comes to my head no matter how crappy it sounds. Although if I do this I have to make sure I go back and edit it.

This advice has made me relies that no matter how hard I try my first draft is not going to be perfect and I am going to have to go back and edit it. It is not acceptable to hand in my shitty first draft which was a bad habit I had fallen in during high school. Out of all of her other writing tips this one affected me the most because of my lazy writing habits and that do not work for me. I would write a paragraph reread it right after writing it, see if it made sense and go on to the next one. That was my editing and it did not work, by not going back and editing the whole thing and making a new rough draft I didn’t get a picture of the entire thing. I couldn’t see if the story connected and flowed. I didn’t see writing rough drafts as part of the writing process.

The author of Bird by Bird made me understand that writing rough drafts was something a writer had to do to get to the final work. It was easy to connect with her because of the way she described and explained the process. She gave her own examples of how she a published writer, writes crap all the time. That it was ok to write crap and that it was part of the process. She said not to get hung up on finding the correct words just write whatever you thought as though you were writing a journal because if you did not you might miss the most important part. She gave this advice in a blunt telling you the truth even if you don’t want to hear it way. The way she described the first rough draft as shitty, made it really easy to connect with her and want to listen to her. Her use of blunt humor, her own personal writing experiences, and perspective allowed me to easily connect with her. I now understand that it is ok to write shitty and that it is in fact a part of the writing process. I no longer will sit at my computer trying to come up with the perfect words until I get so desperate and bang my head on the keyboard hoping inspiration will strike from the gibberish that comes out.

"Shirt-Worthy"

“Shirt-Worthy” starts out with a guy explaining how the journey to coming by a shirt makes the shirt more valuable and that he never found the right occasion to get his own shirt from a band. He went from being a concert goer to being a father. His son asked him for a shirt from a band, so after his long speech about how the journey with the shirt made it so much better, he went out and buys his kid the shirt. His kid ripped it and instead of the father sharing the wise knowledge that the rip made the shirt better he just replaced it.

The conflict for this story is hard to tell because the author jumped around in time with different stories. When you consider all the story it seems the main conflict was that the author had not found the proper occasion to purchase himself a band t-shirt. The author did finally end up with a band t-shirt because he could not let a shirt go to waste. The authors point was to show how the journey and trials you go through to get the shirt makes it more valuable to the owner. The author did not come out and say the point but because he ended and began with the subject of the shirt and how what you went through with the shirt makes it more valuable. This story is timely because I have never really thought of t-shirts meaning so much to one person and I can now begin to associate experiences with clothing. This story is for fathers, concert goers, and t-shirt wearers.

The author moves the story along and is good as expressing feelings through descriptions. This author did a good job of incorporating a strong voice. I could really identify with the author because he shared his thoughts and feelings through the way he states things. This story would have been better if the author had chosen only one event in time. It was hard to distinguish between points because he had a couple going on and he did not come out and say it at the begging of his narration. The author left a lot up to the reader to decide. This was an effective way of getting the reader to think but left a lot of room for confusion.

He kept the characters and dialogue to a minimum. He explained events that another person went through without explaining their character type. He generalized his characters. He described his kid covering his eyes with his arm as something all ten year olds would do and not something unique to his kid. Even though the change in time and stories made the stories confusing the author distinguished between the time changes through subtle clues. He did not come out and say “when I was younger” or “in the year of …” instead he incorporated terms that indicated where he was in his life. Using these subtle clues also made the reader think.