The Working Poor: Invisible in America

What I read for today's blog was very interesting because it talked about children being malnourished as an effect from being poor. A woman by the name of Debbie Frank deals with parents who have malnourished babies or children because they cannot buy the right kind of food. The author states, "Slightly harried and tightly focused, she directed a blunt friendliness toward patients and an edge of anger at  the condition that brought the children here". I can imagine how frustrating it can be to Dr. Frank with all of these children who are unhealthy and unable to perform simple movements that they should be able to do at their age, such as lift themselves up or stand with their legs. I would be angry at the parents because there is all kinds of help that families can recieve to feed their families. They can go to food pantries, they can get food stamps, and they can even apply to a program called WIC, Women, Infants, and Children. This program offers new mothers, who are less fortunate and cannot afford food for their children, classes on how to breast feed and how to feed their child in a healthy way. They give out tons of money each year to the families in the program to buy food. I think it is sad when people have to resort to starving their children because they dont have enough money. With all the help out there they should be getting aid for their children.

Feature Writing

The book Feature Writing: The Pursuit of Excellence has a great section called Revising Your Copy. A necessary and crucial task for writers is one that can be the most difficult, revising. Most writers find it difficult to revise their own papers because they believe that there is nothing wrong with their own words. It is very hard to have to change your whole paper around with revisions when you thought it was perfect the first time. in the author's words, "each writer is his or her own worst enemy".

A good way to revise your own paper is to read it once over to yourself and then walk away for a little bit to clear your head. When you come back to it you should look at it as if it were someone elses paper and try to be as critical as possible. if you dont try to pick out any mistakes, you will never get anywhere. Always make sure that you have another person look at it as well, such as your sister or brother. Having others read over your writing is a great way to get a fresh set of eyes to find mistakes or awkward sentences. This book has really helpful tips on how to revise your essay. 

The Working Poor: Invisible in America

In Chapter Seven of the book The Working poor: Invisible in America the author talks about Tom and Kara King. They have a family of three kids, two of the older sons are from Kara's ex-husband and the younger daughter is Tom and Kara's. Kara has been through a tough time with money because she has had cancer and had to have a bone marrow transplant. Tom and Kara don't have extra money but once in a while they like to treat themselves and the kids to a restaurant meal. They scrapped up enough money over a period of weeks and ended up going to eat at a truck stop where the portions were very big. When Kara asked for  the check the waitress told her that a man at the bar had already paid it. This caused Kara to become furious because she does not like pity. When she got home she was still worked up about it and called the truck stop to talk to the man. Kara said that he said "We were so close-knit, and he was a truck driver on the road a lot and just wanted to do something for us. He was touched. This man couldn't believe we could laugh at life like that".

This story caught my attention right away because it is something that you don't see everyday. A truck driver overhearing a poor family's conversation and deciding to buy their meal. This is a very kind gesture towards a poor family who never gets a break with bills or any type of money situation. Kara remembered the truck driver saying that he counted that her children told her they loved her twenty times. The truck driver who never gets to see his family probably paid for the meal as if it was his family.



  

Talk of the Campus

This piece seems to be difficult for me to think of a good topic that I am sure of. I think I have some good ideas now of what to write about after some searching. My first thought was to write about the play that the school is putting on, The Wizard of Oz. I wanted to focus on talking to some people in the play and see how it is for them when they have to try and balance all the practice with homework and classes. Another idea I had was to talk about all the ways the school offers getting physically fit. I might do two short pieces on each idea.