snow day

I love the snow, and maybe that's because I only experience it in small quantities, but so far I am still in love with it. Here is a poem that came to mind yesterday while walking through the snow. It has nothing to do with a rhetoric situation, it just seemed like a fun thing to write. I feel like it is apporpriate since the purpose of the blog is creative writing. As far as creative writing goes, I really enjoy writing poems, however reading of them is a different story. Whenever I read a poem I always get a different message out of the poem that what is expected to receive from it. In high school this made getting a good grade difficult because I received the "correct" message. But, if the point of literature is for the piece of writing to make an impact on you, to simply "get something out of it" (or at least that's my opinon of what it does) then why should it matter if I get the correct theme or simply my own, so long as I got something out of it?

walking
through the wonderland
of a chilled purity
wanting
to be a part of it
to be frozen
in the painting
the crunch of the snow
the kiss
of the chilled wind
snowy pieces
floating down
into place
and I walk
absorb it all
I feel the desire
to capture it all
but still
that would not
be enough
I need to become
the winter wonderland

Reading of the two websites I learned a lot more about the rhetoric situation from these articles than from the essay because the artlicles are written to be a lot more appealing and are easier to be read. From the website I learned there are 4 key components of the rhetoric situation. The components are an author, an audience, a text of some sort, and a context. The author is anyone who can use communication, meaning I could be the author of a rhetoric situation. The audience is anyone who cares, or more importantly can do something about the problem at hand. The text of some sort I can imagine can be as speech as well as an essay, and the context that is being used is necessary for completion of the rhetoric situation. In all the purpose of the rhetoric situation is how a work of writing expresses its meanings.

Personally I'm not sure if I will ever be using the a rhetorical situation. If I ever say a rhetorical situation I'm pretty sure it would be an accident, and this is because English is not really where my intrest lies. I enjoy reading a lot, as well as creative writing but all of the "English" stuff that falls in between, such as this, really just goes over my head because it does not affect my every day life. I value reading a lot though, especially literature. Or even broader than literature, any book one "gets something out of it". I read a lot of books that may not be literature persay, but I get a lot out of the book, and I walk away pondering life. My English class last year read 1984 and Brave New World (just to name a few) and those books really open up one to thought over how much power a government should have and if a utopia is really possible.

rhetorical situation

In the article the rehtorical situation there is a discussion of how embarassing and dangerous situations are characteristics and questioning the context for creating the rehtorical. Some important terms are audience, speaker, subject, speech and ocacasion. One particular part of the essay that I enjoyed was the comparision of the rhetoric situation through the metaphor of the tree and the rehtoric situation, and then states of the analogy of moral action being a better metaphor next to a tree, however the tree was rather a descriptive and reminded me of nature. I enjoy nature quite a bit, and reading that section of the essay would remind me of hiking and skiing, as well of other nature activities, even more so coming across the the descriptive paragraph of the Trobiand Islands. The description of the canoe reminded me of the yearly canoe and camping trips I take with my family friends. We would go to the Shennendoah, and camp next to the river bank, then get dropped off 11 miles up stream and canoe all the way back to the camp ground. But anyways, back to the rhetorical situation essay I took away what rhetoric means. I learned that it means that it comes into exsistence like an answer is a response to a question, that there must be a need for it before it can exist. This need is called exigence, or the problem the rhetoric needs. Exigence is very important to the rhetoric situation as well as the audience. The audience is key but the key to the audience is the need to know who the audience is before an arguement is made so the speaker can apeal to the audience. The next key term is the speech, and over all the situation controls the rhetorical response.

manatees

So, I guess I should first explain the title of this blogg. I did not know what I was writing about, so how could you title the unknown? I decided to pick the first word that popped into my head, which was convient because it is also the word I choose when playing the name-ball game in class. Manatees are my favorite animal, and have been since I first laid eyes upon the creature at Sea World when I was 6. At the exhibit there was this video of manatees and how they are endangered. I distinctly remeber in the video, a painting of a man who was about to stab a beached manatee with a spear. I immediately felt extremely compassionate toward manatees, and on that day they became my favorite animal. In general, I love marine mammals. Manatees and dolphins especially, but also seals, orcas, and whales in general. Right now my major is engineering, but I would like to work at an aquarium at some point in my life, most likely right after I graduate. My love for marine mammals has always been a characteristic about me, but as far as how I go about creating a carreer that includes has been hard to find/pick. Now the obvious answer would be to be a marine biologist, and at one point that was the plan but then from talking to one of my biology teachers, (who had a degree in it) I found out it was mostly about the dichotmey of fish, which really is not something I want to be spending the time on to learn. And then there was the fact I love to build and create or should I say "engineer" things, and ultimately I decided to apply to Tech as an engineer. I am currently trying to decide whether to be a bioloical systems or an ocean engineer, both would fulfill the degree I need to have to work in most aquariums.

hw?

ok so I'm kind of confused as to when the blog homework starts and how I find my group (especially not knowing first names) so I'm going to focus on my own blog for right now in hopes that the homework will be completed in the proces.
Since we can write about anything I feel I should talk about the most recent thing on my mind, which is today. Today was my first English class, it was rather exciting especially in light of the ball that was thrown around the room. I played softball all through out high school so I'm rather fond of throwing. As a tangent, my softball team was quite good we won the district championship all 3 years I was apart of the team, finishing my senior year with regional championships and making it to state semi-finals. What makes this even more impressive is that the school is currently 5 years old, my class built the program from the bottom.
But, back to today, it is time trials for the ski team at tech, which I am currently on. I love skiing but I'm rather nervous about the time trial due to the fact that the conditions as of Monday night were absolutely terrible. I'm a pretty confident skier, but with the conditions I faced Monday, that confidence went out the window especially since I wiped out while skiing. Hopefully the conditions will be better and I will be able to recover my confidence by tonight, but due to the warm weather that has not yet left us, I am not so sure that the conditions will get better. It might even rain tonight, which may or may not improve the existing conditions.
Lastly, today is my birthday, and I turned 19. Nothing special since its in between 18 and 21, two big birthdays. Fortunately though, my parents bought me a cookie cake for my birthday, which makes me especially happy because cookie cakes are finominal.