Who is my audience?

Who am I writing too? Nature lovers, those who wish to make their home on a creek better.

What is your audience’s background—their education and life experiences? This could be any number of things. I’m writing to a largely unknown audience.

What are their interests? I’m hoping that creeks and their homes are interesting to them. For if not I imagine my words will fall on deaf ears.

What are any notable demographics? I’m going to assume slightly more country than most of Louisville. I imagine the vast majority will be white.

What political circumstances may affect their reading? If they are disabled it’s unlikely they will be able to help. If increasing erosion protection involves destroying something they like it’s unlikely that I’ll have much success.  Extent of nature appreciation is a biggie here.

What does my audience already know? I can’t say for certain. I’m going to assume just about nothing.

What will I need to tell them? I’ll have parts of the Wilson Creek Restoration Project. I’ll need to sell them on the idea that taking care of it is worth the expence.

What is the best way to do so? Layman’s terms.

What is my relationship with my audience? I don’t know them in the slightest. Therefore I’ll be semi-formal and treat lightly not stepping on any toes that don’t need to be stepped on.

What does my audience expect from me? A can do attitude and an appreciation for my plea.

What kind of response do you want? I want people to make a passive choice to avoid destroying the creek in any way possible,

How can you best appeal to your audience? The best way would probably be throwing lots and lots of money at them.. But in all likelihood I’ll just have to be Ernest with them and hope they receive it well. 

Proposal

Brainstorming a Proposal

                I was thinking that I could write a proposal to start a community wide clean up group for the creek. Less for debris but mostly for erosion control; perhaps I could get this together by the locals who live on the creek. I could swing it as both an environmental thing to do and I could sell it as a flood protection method. In this fashion I could move my own goals forward (protecting the fragile creek landscape) and helping homeowners protect their investments.

Audience and Genre

Most often you will chose your genre of writing in part because of its audience. For example if you know you are writing to your son to do some local chores. You wouldn't write an essay about it. Why? because its cumbersome to do so and lets face it your son would probably never read it. This point is made albeit implicitly at the very beginning of "Audience and Genre" with the example that was given. "What [things] you write...are influenced by the audience you envision." In this the "What things" could simply be taken as analogous to genre. For it is genre that decides the "What and How" of a piece of writing.

Proposal

Subject- Mankind's obligation to protect the environment even with the capability to do so.
Focus- Streams are delicate structures that should be protected.
Rationale- Places like my childhood happy place would be destroyed if people were to not take care of our environment.

So what? Although streams may seem trivial, they provide something essential to human environment and as such human live.
Who cares? People who like creeks.
Who should care? People who enjoy living.

So what? Who cares?

"For example, 80% of the worlds medicine comes from biological species or their habitats."
"TAXOL is vanishing due to loss of biodiversity....TAXOL is one of the most promising treatments for ovarian and breast cancer."
"Some scientist speculate that we are losing approximately 100 species per year"
She does make an appeal to the reader to the readers "So what?" question and "Who cares?" question. Three examples are listed above. Telling us how many species are going extinct gives us a "So what". The two connections to medicine show us that our health and the health of our neighbors is the "Who cares", we care whether we realize it or not.

On Iowa

Holston was attempting to discover what the impact of the film "Napoleon Dynamite" was having on the people living where it was filmed. Her questions were focused on finding the impact of an event(Filming of and release of the film) had on the small town. More importantly the ways in which the townspeople's lives had changed since the movie was a Hollywood hit. She spoke to everyone, In person it seems(no mention of electronic media mentioned and quotes common). The man who shot the cow, the people dressed up for the towns look alike contest, and the chamber of commerce to list a few.

I would say option C. She is using the opinions of the local Iowa town to demonstrate what happens when an event like this (Napoleon Dynamite) occurs.She examines the Social structure more than anything else, explaining both sides. Those who are glad that the town is getting some popularity and those who fear that it will be a seen as a hick town. Indeed she showed that for better or worse the town had changed since the film.

Maus

On page 56 of Maus by Art Spiegelman. The WWII veteran (interviewee) takes time to emphasis the important points to his son (interviewer). Oral histories are the histories taken by historians of normal people, to get a general picture of how life may have been at the time. The father explains to his son what his life was like during WWII both during his time of fighting but mostly of how lives in the internment camps were. The son is documenting the oral history of WWII through his father.

O' Whatever Shall I Ask?

What do you want to find out?  I would like to discover what impact the creek has had on the environment and its people.
What is the primary goal of this oral history? To understand the connection people have to places and the impact people have on these places. Through the specificity of Wilson Creek as an example.

1. When did you first become familiar with the creek? and how?
This will give me a background with them and their relation that will allow me to go into further more specific and useful questions. So yes, it will further my purpose.
2. What have you done in your lifetime to ensure that the creek will remain for generations to come?
It helps with my primary goal of human environment interaction
3. Had you heard of the Wilson Creek Restoration Project downstream? If so what do you think of it?
Helps me gauge their understanding of  the creeks brevity and their knowledge of efforts made to protect it.
4. What aspects of the creek's existence has affected you in your lifetime? Instances of flooding, drought?
 Emotional side of its impact.
5. Have you noticed and great changes in the creek over the decades that you've lived in your home(creek related)? Will tie this to chronological understanding of its existence.

People of Interest

My Mother- Was born and raised feet away from where we live now. Remembers going to the creek as a child in much the same way i have.
My Grandma- According to my mother has some ties to the creek as well. Also grew up in the same area as my mother and myself. Quite possibly has connections to the creek worth discerning.
*Mr.& Mrs Boyd- Homeowners whose home sits on the edge of the creek near the overpass where i spend so much of my childhood. Childhood friends of my Grandma. Should know some detail of the creek's history.
Civil Engineers and Biologist that partook in Bernheim restoration- Should be able to give me a non-personal connection to the creek. an opportunity to comprehend the brevity of the creek.

*- prefered guest

Some Problems Of Concern

Has the level of pollution/littering increased in recent years?

Has the creek suffered from the recent Urban Sprawl?

Are homeowners active enough it their caketaking of the Creek itself?

Are individuals less interested in appreciating the creek? Has interest in it dwindled as generations pass?

Creek Sitter

            There’s an old creek by my home (Wilson Creek) it meanders its way through the lower parts of my neighborhood after beginning in my backyard. One piece of this creek is particularly special. The tiny overpass through the creek acts as a point where two things meet, where nature and people come together. In one brief moment one can become engulfed in the majesty of the place. Feeling enclosed as the trees cover one side of the creek bed as though fingers curing up from underneath it. Then you notice the water, scarcely deep enough to get your feet wet in most places, it doesn’t rumble of thunder or moan. Instead it trickles quaintly as the water skids its way through the tunnel just beneath the road. If you look carefully, really carefully you can watch the bits of dirt and rock get picked up where the water is the fastest. This new sediment then gets deposited as soon as they were elevated when the stream slowed once again. 

                You could hunt for crayfish in the summer, checking carefully under each and every rock, just sitting there in the dry bead in the middle surrounded on all parts by the passing water. You can almost see the life bustling from within the creek. The crayfish, the bugs, all of them make their home in this one tiny section. They spend the entirety of their lives in an area the size of my room. How monstrous and buffoon-like must I appear to these tiny creatures? Moving around their home clumsily. Perhaps they fear me? Ought they not fear that which can create or destroy them as I can? How powerful I feel, like a god even with I toy with them. Prodding into their homes with a stick, scattering the life-forms away from their little dream world. What does it feel like I wonder to have your entire life shaken about, say,  you’re but a fish in water near a thrown stone? The expanse of life about me is immense. Hundreds of creatures come about me; Whether by water, ground or air. The fish, ants and dragonflies welcome me. Even the very trees themselves, that which shields this entire place from the complete harshness of the sun, they are alive around me drowning me in their presence I am but a part of the greatness of the creek.  How paradoxical it seems to find a singular area to make one feel and once god-like and omnipotent and like a cog stuck in some perpetual motion machine.

                This is the memory I have of Wilson Creek. The place in my childhood all my own. A simple curiosity led me to wonder what existence it was like further downstream. Hit the books I did, until I discovered that the creek had been modified heavily since its discovery by the Europeans; Irrigation took its toll on the creek I had grown so fond of. Where the creek around me looks pristine, and with flora, fauna and life in abundance; the areas further along were not so lucky. God-men took from nature its beauty for its own design. Draining the life from it with watery passageways into their fields for their crops to grow from whence they wouldn't. For hundreds of years it had happened. Since the 1700’s when the land was but scratched and not scared.  The duality I felt at the realization rushes through me.  I realize that the very men who built these farms were no other than myself; Human, and so caught up in our own existence that we forget all else.

The banished and manipulated creek however is no more. Bernheim forestry and Kentucky universities have come together it seems to fix all of the problems that man has wrought to the creek. Not only did they replant the areas around it with its original inhabitants. They rebuilt the stream in its entireity. Senior Vice President of UofL’s research put it this way “What’s unique about the Wilson Creek project… is its comprehensiveness. Streams have been modified or enhanced before, but not fully restored.”  The creek of my childhood gets the tender love and care of its maintainers once more. After being the focus of so much destruction. It’s a miracle I suppose that the creek itself is restorable at all. It had in parts eroded uncontrollably going straight down to the bedrock, acting more like an axe, rather than its normal sandpaper like attributes. Man in all of its wonder can, it seems give life as well as take from it.

                It takes little more than lifting a few rocks it seems to reach a sense of euphoria in enlightenment. To extract from nature its drama; this mystical place of my childhood, I wish to share it. To teach my children to see, to understand where others only manipulate. Bernheim seems to share my goal on this matter, save that it’s not restricted to my children but to all who care to listen. Especially those who own a home on my creek. They seek to instill in them a bit of respect for the brevity of their actions, to make perhaps benevolent caretakers from fallible men.

                How magnificent it was to know that some other soul caught the understanding of such a place as I did, In mass even. Many men with many titles trooped across my creek, engineers, biologist, arbitrators. All for the goal of cleaning up the destruction of the other men, with different titles that came before them. This group had an ambition that set them apart from the other men. They sought completeness “The restoration of Wilson Creek ….  Is being hailed as an unprecedented opportunity for engineers, biologists, arborists and landowners to see what happens when a stream is rebuilt virtually from scratch.” Not only are we inviting nature to scab itself over our mistakes (revegetation) we are cleaning the wound, replicating it, so that it doesn’t have to do its job twice. Allowing the creek to snake and wind so that erosion remains local and the debris comes as though brushed sandpaper and the soil is not cleaved.  Letting the ground itself be the filter and reservoir. Allowing the area around it to swell with the seasons to create water pristine and bristling with life.

                This watery crossroads, a place that allows for the intersection between two great forces, the ever-present nature, and the ever ambitious man. What is it that calls to us more, our appreciation, our understanding of the world; this drive to comprehend insurmountable beauty? Or is it something different, and more sinister, do we only seek to know to manipulate and destroy? Are we capable of no benevolence only shortcomings? And I, what do I think? I think I shall sit. Pondering things at a creek. As men have done for longer than there were men to create or destroy. 

 “The Meadow Before Stream Relocation”. Photograph. n.d. Web. Jun. 19. 2011.

“The Restored Streambed”. Photograph. n.d. Web. Jun. 19. 2011.

“Wilson Creek After Restoration But Before Revegetation”. Photograph. n.d. Web. Jun. 19. 2011.

Unit II Anotations

Bernheim Arbourem and Research Forest  Bernheim Arbourem and Research Forest, n.d. Sun. 19 Jun          

  2011

Wilson creek, like all streams, serves as a filter and regulator for the water coming through it and allows the water to go into the surrounding area slowly and more pure as opposed to an onslaught of liquid attacking it at once.  The path of Wilson Creek remains similar to what it was 400 years ago before the onset of European settlers and the irrigation that followed. In 2003 the Bernheim Forest and the Universities of Louisville and Kentucky successfully petitioned for an Environmental Protection Agency grant. Much survey was done as to determine the original route of the creek before the European settlers arrived. From the data found researchers decided were best to place the routes so as to work with the already standing environment, not work against it. Biologist were called in to ensure that all life (fish, microorganisms and otherwise) were all around and in proper numbers. It does however become clear that to Bernheim  it is important that “Wilson Creek is a stream with very good water quality….. This project helps ensure the stream’s future ability to purify water and maintain good habitat”.  Ensuring that the end goal will and ought to remain a healthy environment and a sustainable environment for wildlife and people. As such Wilson Creek is being used as a workshop to teach locals about the importance of environmental protection and what homeowners on the property can do to properly care for the watershed around them.

“Snaking and Winding Again” Louisville.edu. University of Louisville. n.d. Web. Jun. 19 2011

Since the late 1700’s people have been altering Wilson Creek and its immediate vicinity. Sometimes simply diverting a bid of the creeks water flow into nearby crop fields other times far more extreme plowing straight through the area taking whatever trees and life that went with it. The  Environmental Protection Agency gave 500,000 dollars to the cause. What is so impressive is the fact that “The restoration of Wilson Creek in rural ….  Is being hailed as an unprecedented opportunity for engineers, biologists, arborists and landowners to see what happens when a stream is rebuilt virtually from scratch.” The magnitude of this work is being embraced by Art Parola the civil engineer in charge. The man who convinced Bernheim to take the extra effort to complete revamp the creek as opposed to repeating the normal vegetation and done policy. Explaining that the creek was incorrect and at a systemic level. After five years of preemptive research they finally decided to operate on the creek in its fullest. Even if for quite some time the renovation area looked more like a destruction site than it did a bed of creation. The local flora and fauna will take some years to completely regrow. Thus is the need for periodic checks.

June 17 Closing

I will probably have to rewrite most of it. The information i found was very much "hey, look what we did. That was awesome." kind of writing. Almost all of the emotional connection i made with my friend will have to be removed, much to my dismay. I thought it was the stronger side of the piece. I can go into how exactly the wildlife has changed and how different the creek was at various stages and emphasize the decades of irrigation from the creek. I hope it turns out well. I'm a bit doubtful of what the end piece will be. I feel like in an odd tinge of irony relating my paper to an outside source will diminish the scope of it.

June,17 prompt

On page 260 second paragraph from the end of the page. He inserts two quotes from a New York writer Edward Hoagland : "Negro bitterness bore down mainly on other Negroes" and "The New Yorker's quick-hunch posture for broken field maneuvering". During all of this he makes it quite clear that these are the opinions of people other than himself on a topic very close to him. Immediately after, he explains his response to this. Referring to the actions of the women he saw in the New York area to him as he passed by. This seems to me to be written correctly. It was Edward Hoagland said "...." and to that i say "....". Which the text "They say, I say," says to do.

Research Article

http://www.bernheim.org/stream.html

This is the closest thing i could find. It talks about how the path of Wilson Creek has been changed and how they are restoring it. The work has been done by Bernheim forest, a place with which i am familiar.

Wilson Creek What is Important?

I've spoken at length about the emotional feelings associated with the overpass itself. What i haven't done however is actually look up any physical evidence about what creek does. Names of wildlife, water flow rates, erosion rate is it a modern creation or has it been here for centuries? That sort of thing.

Unit 1. Reminders of Home

     There’s an old creek by my home, it wanders its way through the lower parts of my neighborhood. One part of this creek feels particularly special. The tiny overpass that the creek creeps through acts as a point where two things meet, where nature and people come together. In one brief moment one can become engulfed in the majesty of the place. A sense of enclosure comes over you as the tree’s cover one side of the creek bed as though fingers curling around an insect. Then you notice the water, scarcely deep enough to get your feet wet in most places. It doesn’t rumble of thunder or moan. Instead it trickles quaintly as the water skids its way through the long concrete tunnel with light pecking through the other side. If you look carefully, really carefully you can watch the bits of dirt and rock get picked up where the water is the fastest and then get deposited as soon as they were elevated when the stream slowed once again.

     The concrete structure itself is imposing, atop it sets the road, “the road” because it’s the only entrance or exit out of my little neighborhood. On each side at the top comes an extension of the blacktop of the road onto the flow tunnel itself. And at its end a concrete slab, just large enough to sit and just wide enough to walk on if you have faith in your balance. Creating a perfect perch from which to watch the creek below. After following the rocky outcrops around it down into the bed itself a slab of smooth stone sits beneath the road and flow tunnels. Just after that the water starts to deepen. Just beyond that however is an area where the ground comes up from the water as dirt plateaul, surrounded by deeper water where one can stand and feel as though invited to a wildlife exhibit. With some patience and the right weather, you can watch little critters scatter across the water. From the ever elegant water skidder; to the always hiding never moving crawfish the stream is alive. I imagine to one of these creatures I must look imposing, dwarfing them so absolutely. I wonder if they can see me. Do they notice me at all? They seem to go on about their day as if I hadn’t ever existed. How much one can learn about perspective from such tiny creature

     People and their things are often heard and seen from my creek. Loud cars the yelling’s of bitter neighbors discarded soda cups the things people forget about at a place they’ve never known. I speak of “people” infringing on ”my” place. This is hardly fair on my part. It’s only “my” place because I grew up here and I have memories here.  My greatest childhood friend and I spent many, many days there. We went there as a way to escape. It was a place that seemed serene whenever we’d have troubles with life whether it was a teacher who irked us, his hectic home, life or something as simple as the state of our lives. It was a place all to our own. We used to talk about it as though it was our home, sitting there with feet dangling off the side, twelve feet from the water below. It was heaven to us. A place free from parents’ rules, and expectation, a place where everything falls gently into serenity. We eventually decided to mark it. Taking this obnoxious white graffiti paint we painted our names onto the flat of the concrete. How simple those days were. When spending hours at one place not doing anything or thinking of doing anything wasn’t a vacation, it was what was.

     It wasn’t until many years later however that I realized how circular life was. My friend had long since moved away, we stayed in contact but we had largely gone our different ways. He had returned to my home for a visit and like clockwork we returned to the creek, our creek, only to find it crawling with kids. Kids that were the age we were when we spent all of our time there. We spoke about the confusion we had felt by this for some length. I remember being torn between two thoughts. I was, on the one hand glad that others could have the opportunity to have a part of their lives a memory with which I so greatly cherished. On the other, irate that those little devils would dare taint my little heaven with their grubby little hands. More than anything, I realized then that the places we are drawn as kids feel very different as an adult. It’s as though the sunlight suddenly felt cold on your skin, you can still recognize it but it is so starkly different that you immediately realize that the sanctuary you found comfort in as a child would never move you the same way again.

Discovery!

While writing this paper last night i talked to my mother about what it was i was doing. From this we started talking about the creek and the roll it played to our childhoods. While i locked myself away in my room to focus all of my energies to writing my mother interrupts me to tell me that the creek with which i was so fond of as a child starts in my own back yard!

The Stone Horse, The Maguey

Page 500 section 2 paragraph 18.
" I felt instead a headlong rush of images: people hunting wild horses with spears on the Pleistocene veld of southern California"
In this one tiny line Lopez accomplishes a great deal. In addition to exemplifying the emotional effect that the horse had on him by giving an image of the world that it must have came from. He also gives a bit of history as well. Showing that while the horse in and of itself is incredible it's significance becomes magnified by the place, both physical and in time that it came into existence. This shows imagery, narrative description, emotional appeal and a sense of time.All together it showcases what a true understanding of place can do to empower a piece of writing.

That ol' Creek

I've chosen the creek by my home as my "place", I spent a good bit of my childhood there, i remember much of it quite vividly. With the trees bustling in the breeze and the trickle of water as it proceeds down the way. It has always served as my go to place to get away from the stresses of life. No amount of anger is ever enough to withstand the serenity that comes with it. Furthermore i love that it changes depending on the recent weather and the season. In the Spring everything is blooming and bursting through the ground around it, in the Summer everything is lively but it's less intense feeling. In the Fall everything changes yet again the entire area gets painted orange. In winter, the trees become bare and the stream comes to a near halt.

Cave Awareness

Before i began dating my girlfriend i had been under the illusion that long term commitment, marriage and other similar ideas were toxin and would lead only to my own destruction. I envisioned that living life with another person would be like walking through life with a weight piled upon my shoulder. When we began dating the idea of her, or anyone being a lifelong companion for me hadn't crossed my mind. After being with her and seeing the way my life worked with her in it. I began to crawl out of the cave. For awhile i was on the fence about it. I was caught up in this feeling of wonder and ease that came with her companionship but told myself that that was hedonism and hedonism alone. I feel this way but this isn't the way things are. A blinding light. As time continued on i realized that i was wrong from the start. She would not be a weight with which to bear. Our loads should become one and she could carry my weight when i am fatigued and i to her. Leaving both of us more exuberant in our trek through life. Now when i talk to my friends who have dispositions about relationships akin to me in the cave they seem confused, they perceive me as the one who is disalusioned much to my discontent. Alas my pleas fall of deaf ears. They seem destined to stare at cave walls forever.

Plato's Allegory of a Cave

Socrates' is trying to say that it is better to be doing poorly the tasks of poor master than obey the poor master well and imitate his own failures. No knowledgeable person should ever attempt to diminish their own intelligence which is the highest of virtues. No amount of physical suffering can ever come close to matching the "pain" of  false knowledge. A false understanding of what is. This to Socrates is paramount. If a philosopher(anyone) is to be able to comprehend the world he needs to see it truly and not through the illusionment of others who believe themselves to be correct.

I don't really find this to be one of Socrates' strong points. In general i like his philosophy but in his "Allegory of the Cave" it is rampant with holes and breaks in completeness. First off it contains a paradox, If some educators are destined to teach those in the light to venture into the darkness and to see it as truth then by this account Socrates' himself could very well be one of these men. If however this were the case then his entire allegory holds to merit. Paramount to his reasoning is that his ideas are necessary to reach enlightenment. He gives no real explanation as to why he is infallible as an educator even within his own terms. 

My Place

I'm fairly certain of what my place will be. An old drainage tunnel through the creek by my
home. I remember it vividly, it was the place were in many ways i grew up. i spent many daysas a child there with my best friend. I realized a few years ago when i was older how strange it felt to see children that were surely the age that i was when i first began to frequent the place. It was then that i realized that it wasn't simply the emotional connects that i held to the place that made it special. It was in and of itself something that drew people to it. My grandma grew up where i did. And my mother and her sisters. If i need a history of it and the power that it had to move people surely i could find it from them. I'm looking forward to reviewing my childhood and perhaps find a child me in that somehow i had lost.

Who am I?

I am a man with varied interest, most of these are connected in some way to my girlfriend or science. I was an engineering student last year, and have recently transferred out of Speed school and into chemistry.

I'm from Fairdale Kentucky, and plan on being a scientist in some form or fashion with my life. The exact what as far as that i am still not completely certain about.

I have had one truly wonderful wonderful English teacher who i think helped me come into my own as a writer. The rest of them were mediocre or worse. To be frank however, i've learned more about writing by talking to my friends who are good at writing than i have through any other method

Must to Jenn's dismay i usually think of place as being a geographical location. A setting if you will. I have read and understood the platonic view of things. Or if i will predict what the course will be going over. I would assume that to a writer place should be a metaphorical space which feelings, thoughts and etc.. all come together to create a view of something worthy of writing about.