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Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Week 2
What amazing sentence, phrase, moment would you like to share from your writer/blog? Wow us with your selection and tell us why you think your selection is wow inducing. And, wow inducing can be good, bad or ugly.
"His words came at me like a speeding fist, like a sucker punch, yet somehow in that moment I was able to duck." I felt like this was the "wow" moment of my article. The imagery at the beginning is very precise and conveyed a very specific feeling that I could really identify with, then the ending is surprising, and therefore compelling. This sentence made me want to continue to read to understand how she avoided the "sucker punch", because that's normally something you can't dodge.
"Residual liquid from the dying process used to make Pure underwear, the company also said, is dried, hardened and sealed before being placed in landfills. That contrasts with normal methods, in which any left over dyes are released into a water source." Green underwear????? Yes it is possible. This quote is from my blog about green business and the future of energy in our world. I find it so great to read about something so strange and unassuming as underwear going green. We don't ever think about the carbon footprint of our underwear,but this blog brings it to the forefront by writing an article about them.
"To put it another way, we are not just adding more troops in Afghanistan. We are transforming our mission — from baby-sitting to adoption. We are going from a limited mission focused on baby-sitting Afghanistan — no matter how awful its government — in order to prevent an Al Qaeda return to adopting Afghanistan as our state-building project."
I thought this was the "wow" moment of Thomas Friedman's article in this Sunday's Times because it is where all of his previous observations about the present situation in Afghanistan come together to form his own unique theory. I did not, however, find the idea of Afghanistan being our "state-building project" and "adopted baby" very pleasant. I tend to react a bit cautiously when our country is so set on imposing its ways on others, assuming that what has worked for us politically and socially (or maybe, more accurately, what has become accepted for us politically and socially) must be the best and only option for other nations.
"I wouldn't have gotten naked or even gone shirtless. Most young adults, excluding myself, seem to have been a lot leaner back in those days. And, apparently, the Brazilian waxing technique had not made its way stateside yet, either. I never noticed any of that back then. I even found myself getting kind of sweet on Joan Baez, and she wasn't even naked."
This wasn't one of Steve Dahl's best columns. He basically writes about how he saw the movie "Taking Wood-stock" and how it reminded him of an original wood-stock movie made in the 80's. I choose this quote as my "wow" moment because it saved his story and also showed me that no matter how dreary his story is, it wont leave you out hanging questioning the end.
"Much as the far left of the antiwar movement commanded wide coverage during the Vietnam years, so now are extremists on the right hogging the media stage -- with the media's complicity."
Dionne writes about how the health care reform debate in the country is being dominated by a vocal minority. Though he conveys his point very well, with all sorts of quotes from Representatives all around the country, I was still disappointed with his writing. It seemed that he was forced to write the article rather than wanting to. The "wow" moment was the only time that my eyebrows raised at all.
Speaking of Obama: "He is cold, like someone who is contained not because he's disciplined and successfully restrains his emotions, but because there's not that much to restrain. This is the dark side of cool." This is bold. This passage appears in the end of the article to act as a sort of closing, and I was wowed by Noonan's strategic build to get to this point. She balances her argument between evidence and inference until this point where she dives into logic-based automatic fire on the President's personality.
"But that’s OK — they know that I’m corrupt, a liar, a Nazi, and have been spewing my evil in my writings." This to me was a strong "wow" moment in my article. Paul was writing about how he used to get so much hater-mail in 2004 when he was strongly questioning Bush's motives. Now, once again, his hater-mail has reached that same level except for now, it makes no sense. He writes about health care, economics, and macro modeling. How could people be so against those kinds of issues? He does attack the facts in a particular way that might offend people... but the way in which he writes is just...real. Made me think that maybe people just can't handle the reality. He ended the article with this line: "Something is going very wrong in the heads of a substantial number of Americans."
This week's piece was about a daughter who decided to travel to Ukraine to disperse her Grandmother's ashes. Towards the middle of the article, the author admits going to Ukraine was more about connecting with her own heritage than finding a resting place for her Grandmother: "I needed something tangible to connect with the past, and Grandma would be the pretext to get there."
I can completely sympathize with this feeling; I think we all inherently want to know where we are from. Personally, I am part Sami, which traditionally were nomadic reindeer herders in the Nordic counties of Europe. (I know, pretty weird.) My grandmother doesn't seem to care much about this heritage, but I couldn't find it more interesting.
I also want to highlight the ending, which is short and sweet. (For context, the Grandmother's ashes were stored in a coffee can that never made it to Ukraine.) "One thing I’m certain of: I’d rather end up in a coffee can than anywhere near Kirovograd [Ukraine]."
"The lesson, then, is that we need to create more opportunities for mixed-race communication that isn't obligatory and isn't self-consciously about race. We're more likely to understand how race is lived by listening to one person's stories of his childhood and how he got his middle name, rather than studying the data on a cohort." I agree with this because I believe that if we really want to talk about issues such as race and class, we need to talk from personal experience and not just recite facts. Personal experience is more relatable than numbers and statistics. For me, it's harder to understand someone when their being formal and listing off facts. I can better connect with the point they're trying to make if they are down to earth and speak from experience.
"One of my friends had a glamorous older sister who fed the seals at Fairyland--she was long-legged and pretty, and she'd stand in her red miniskirt on a platform, tossing the fish--but then something happened; she went to live down in the flats, and her mother didn't want to see her anymore."
Flanagan's article was about the kidnapping of Patty Hearst and how her image in America changed from victim to aggressor. On a lesser scale, this change was apparent in the coming-of-age of many girls in the 1970's. This moment struck me because this "glamorous older sister" was so easy to visualize and the mother's reaction is more about a change in appearance than an actual change in her daughter. The sadness is both matter-of-fact and heartbreaking; with so few words, it tells an entire story.
"Maybe there is no ‘right’ way to take it all in; there is only a sigh, a shudder, a wincing nod to the demon in us all, and a breathing through." - THE PSYCHO RAPIST FREAKSHOW CONUNDRUM. THE DUGARD STORY ASKS: HOW DO YOU MAKE SENSE OF THE UGLIEST ABUSES OF MAN? by Mark Morford
This is the ending to a bold, moving and thought provoking look at how to deal with horrifying stories such as the Jaycee Lee Dugard/Phillip Garrido saga (a “sickening kidnapping/rape/ confinement tale spanning 18 years.”) In his article, Mark Morford presents and analyzes different responses to such appalling accounts that our world seems to be riddled with. After exploring most every option and angle he admits he doesn’t know the correct answer. His final sentence leaves you with some resolve after the mind boggling article; he puts such a hard question – “How do you make sense of the ugliest abuses of man?” – into perspective and leaves your mind swimming with suggestions without a helpless and downtrodden heart.
"I can read all the Dr. Spock, Dr. Sears, Dr. Brazelton, etc., as I embark on parenting and try to learn how to be a good mother, but the sad truth is, Phil Garrido will end up making many of my parenting decisions for me."
The reason why I chose this as my "wow" moment was because of the brutal honesty in this sentence; the author concedes that she wants to be one thing, but she admits that she has no control over it. I like that the author references pop culture and current events, but finds a way to relate it back to herself and her short-comings as a mother.
"Parents - I remember well - are caught in the dailiness of child-raising. But grandparents, imbued with a different sense of time, create a narrative arc across generations. If parents are the forward momentum of a child’s life, we become the curators of traditions."
I choose this as my "wow" moment because when I read this statement i completely found it to be true. Ellen is a grandmother and this column is a reflection of the time spent with her grandchildren this past weekend. She beautifully states the roll of how grandparents has changed from when she was a child to her role as a grandmother now. When i read this statement i completely agreed that the grandparents will always be a representation of tradition where as parents now a days, always want to be advanced and ahead of everything.
"Bring it on, time, with your inexorable march forward. Our grown-up children have adventures ahead of them, and so do we grown-ups." I love this sort of sassiness, because she is almost defying time, and the way she talks about time as a person, like she is going to fend it off really makes this the "wow" factor in the article i read.
"It's not difficult to understand how demureness and chastity can be a source of fascination, even a kind of fetish, for all kinds of people. After all, some young women still dream of becoming nuns, Lanz of Salzburg flannel nightgowns still abound and "repressed" eras like the Victorian are in many ways imbued with more eroticism than even the hyper-sexual world of today. I included two sentences because the second one, which is the focus, seems a little out of the blue with out the first. One thing i like aobut the second sentence is that, although i have no idea what Lanz of Salzburg is , i get a clear idea of this unflattering puffy thing and the phrase just sounds so deliciously uncomfortable. I also appreciate that in this sentence there is a lot that could make the wording choppy, but somehow manages to sound pleasant. Daum is rather good at that.
17 comments:
"His words came at me like a speeding fist, like a sucker punch, yet somehow in that moment I was able to duck."
I felt like this was the "wow" moment of my article. The imagery at the beginning is very precise and conveyed a very specific feeling that I could really identify with, then the ending is surprising, and therefore compelling. This sentence made me want to continue to read to understand how she avoided the "sucker punch", because that's normally something you can't dodge.
Excellent, Emily! You got us off to a great start and selected a fantastic line. Solid work.
"Residual liquid from the dying process used to make Pure underwear, the company also said, is dried, hardened and sealed before being placed in landfills. That contrasts with normal methods, in which any left over dyes are released into a water source."
Green underwear????? Yes it is possible. This quote is from my blog about green business and the future of energy in our world. I find it so great to read about something so strange and unassuming as underwear going green. We don't ever think about the carbon footprint of our underwear,but this blog brings it to the forefront by writing an article about them.
"To put it another way, we are not just adding more troops in Afghanistan. We are transforming our mission — from baby-sitting to adoption. We are going from a limited mission focused on baby-sitting Afghanistan — no matter how awful its government — in order to prevent an Al Qaeda return to adopting Afghanistan as our state-building project."
I thought this was the "wow" moment of Thomas Friedman's article in this Sunday's Times because it is where all of his previous observations about the present situation in Afghanistan come together to form his own unique theory. I did not, however, find the idea of Afghanistan being our "state-building project" and "adopted baby" very pleasant. I tend to react a bit cautiously when our country is so set on imposing its ways on others, assuming that what has worked for us politically and socially (or maybe, more accurately, what has become accepted for us politically and socially) must be the best and only option for other nations.
"I wouldn't have gotten naked or even gone shirtless. Most young adults, excluding myself, seem to have been a lot leaner back in those days. And, apparently, the Brazilian waxing technique had not made its way stateside yet, either. I never noticed any of that back then. I even found myself getting kind of sweet on Joan Baez, and she wasn't even naked."
This wasn't one of Steve Dahl's best columns. He basically writes about how he saw the movie "Taking Wood-stock" and how it reminded him of an original wood-stock movie made in the 80's. I choose this quote as my "wow" moment because it saved his story and also showed me that no matter how dreary his story is, it wont leave you out hanging questioning the end.
"Much as the far left of the antiwar movement commanded wide coverage during the Vietnam years, so now are extremists on the right hogging the media stage -- with the media's complicity."
Dionne writes about how the health care reform debate in the country is being dominated by a vocal minority. Though he conveys his point very well, with all sorts of quotes from Representatives all around the country, I was still disappointed with his writing. It seemed that he was forced to write the article rather than wanting to. The "wow" moment was the only time that my eyebrows raised at all.
Click to read the article.
This is Peter
Speaking of Obama: "He is cold, like someone who is contained not because he's disciplined and successfully restrains his emotions, but because there's not that much to restrain. This is the dark side of cool."
This is bold. This passage appears in the end of the article to act as a sort of closing, and I was wowed by Noonan's strategic build to get to this point. She balances her argument between evidence and inference until this point where she dives into logic-based automatic fire on the President's personality.
"But that’s OK — they know that I’m corrupt, a liar, a Nazi, and have been spewing my evil in my writings."
This to me was a strong "wow" moment in my article. Paul was writing about how he used to get so much hater-mail in 2004 when he was strongly questioning Bush's motives. Now, once again, his hater-mail has reached that same level except for now, it makes no sense. He writes about health care, economics, and macro modeling. How could people be so against those kinds of issues? He does attack the facts in a particular way that might offend people... but the way in which he writes is just...real. Made me think that maybe people just can't handle the reality. He ended the article with this line: "Something is going very wrong in the heads of a substantial number of Americans."
This week's piece was about a daughter who decided to travel to Ukraine to disperse her Grandmother's ashes. Towards the middle of the article, the author admits going to Ukraine was more about connecting with her own heritage than finding a resting place for her Grandmother: "I needed something tangible to connect with the past, and Grandma would be the pretext to get there."
I can completely sympathize with this feeling; I think we all inherently want to know where we are from. Personally, I am part Sami, which traditionally were nomadic reindeer herders in the Nordic counties of Europe. (I know, pretty weird.) My grandmother doesn't seem to care much about this heritage, but I couldn't find it more interesting.
I also want to highlight the ending, which is short and sweet. (For context, the Grandmother's ashes were stored in a coffee can that never made it to Ukraine.)
"One thing I’m certain of: I’d rather end up in a coffee can than anywhere near Kirovograd [Ukraine]."
"The lesson, then, is that we need to create more opportunities for mixed-race communication that isn't obligatory and isn't self-consciously about race. We're more likely to understand how race is lived by listening to one person's stories of his childhood and how he got his middle name, rather than studying the data on a cohort."
I agree with this because I believe that if we really want to talk about issues such as race and class, we need to talk from personal experience and not just recite facts. Personal experience is more relatable than numbers and statistics. For me, it's harder to understand someone when their being formal and listing off facts. I can better connect with the point they're trying to make if they are down to earth and speak from experience.
"One of my friends had a glamorous older sister who fed the seals at Fairyland--she was long-legged and pretty, and she'd stand in her red miniskirt on a platform, tossing the fish--but then something happened; she went to live down in the flats, and her mother didn't want to see her anymore."
Flanagan's article was about the kidnapping of Patty Hearst and how her image in America changed from victim to aggressor. On a lesser scale, this change was apparent in the coming-of-age of many girls in the 1970's. This moment struck me because this "glamorous older sister" was so easy to visualize and the mother's reaction is more about a change in appearance than an actual change in her daughter. The sadness is both matter-of-fact and heartbreaking; with so few words, it tells an entire story.
"Maybe there is no ‘right’ way to take it all in; there is only a sigh, a shudder, a wincing nod to the demon in us all, and a breathing through."
- THE PSYCHO RAPIST FREAKSHOW CONUNDRUM. THE DUGARD STORY ASKS: HOW DO YOU MAKE SENSE OF THE UGLIEST ABUSES OF MAN? by Mark Morford
This is the ending to a bold, moving and thought provoking look at how to deal with horrifying stories such as the Jaycee Lee Dugard/Phillip Garrido saga (a “sickening kidnapping/rape/ confinement tale spanning 18 years.”) In his article, Mark Morford presents and analyzes different responses to such appalling accounts that our world seems to be riddled with. After exploring most every option and angle he admits he doesn’t know the correct answer. His final sentence leaves you with some resolve after the mind boggling article; he puts such a hard question – “How do you make sense of the ugliest abuses of man?” – into perspective and leaves your mind swimming with suggestions without a helpless and downtrodden heart.
"I can read all the Dr. Spock, Dr. Sears, Dr. Brazelton, etc., as I embark on parenting and try to learn how to be a good mother, but the sad truth is, Phil Garrido will end up making many of my parenting decisions for me."
The reason why I chose this as my "wow" moment was because of the brutal honesty in this sentence; the author concedes that she wants to be one thing, but she admits that she has no control over it. I like that the author references pop culture and current events, but finds a way to relate it back to herself and her short-comings as a mother.
"Parents - I remember well - are caught in the dailiness of child-raising. But grandparents, imbued with a different sense of time, create a narrative arc across generations. If parents are the forward momentum of a child’s life, we become the curators of traditions."
I choose this as my "wow" moment because when I read this statement i completely found it to be true. Ellen is a grandmother and this column is a reflection of the time spent with her grandchildren this past weekend. She beautifully states the roll of how grandparents has changed from when she was a child to her role as a grandmother now. When i read this statement i completely agreed that the grandparents will always be a representation of tradition where as parents now a days, always want to be advanced and ahead of everything.
"Bring it on, time, with your inexorable march forward. Our grown-up children have adventures ahead of them, and so do we grown-ups." I love this sort of sassiness, because she is almost defying time, and the way she talks about time as a person, like she is going to fend it off really makes this the "wow" factor in the article i read.
"It's not difficult to understand how demureness and chastity can be a source of fascination, even a kind of fetish, for all kinds of people. After all, some young women still dream of becoming nuns, Lanz of Salzburg flannel nightgowns still abound and "repressed" eras like the Victorian are in many ways imbued with more eroticism than even the hyper-sexual world of today.
I included two sentences because the second one, which is the focus, seems a little out of the blue with out the first. One thing i like aobut the second sentence is that, although i have no idea what Lanz of Salzburg is , i get a clear idea of this unflattering puffy thing and the phrase just sounds so deliciously uncomfortable. I also appreciate that in this sentence there is a lot that could make the wording choppy, but somehow manages to sound pleasant. Daum is rather good at that.
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