Baldwin and Staple

In Baldwin’s essay he gives a sense of his understanding of how racism spreads and the effects it has had. Baldwin realizes that Americans first looked down upon blacks and that this belief has spread worldwide and things will never be the same between blacks and whites. Staple shows the prejudice made against him here in America and how he his viewed and prejudge based on his skin color and appearance. He shared that these were things that he was going to live with and these prejudices were based on fears from previous experiences or from what they herd. What was different from Baldwin and Staple is that Staple changed the way he did things to avoid and cope with his prejudices. Staple seemed to just live with and understand why things were which Staple seemed to understand but change. Baldwin wrote his essay for the town where he lived in Switzerland, and he wrote about how the people in the town treated him so he seemed to direct more of his attention to America. He blamed America more than the people in his town. Staple was writing for a women’s magazine and most of the readers where white women. He wrote about his prejudices he received from white women and white people in general, so his listeners where the ones making the prejudices and they had to read about them so he had to be careful and informative at the same time.

Ways of Knowing

How do you know what is true? Brought into the world you must rely on purely what you are told is to be true. You must also make assumptions, but you can never bee a hundred percent that these things are true. For example when you are born you learn who your parents and family are and where you live (geographical wise). You are told what these things are and you believe them, but how can you truly know what is the truth. For all you know you could have been adopted at birth or even switched with another baby. You are told where you live for example Harrisonburg, Virginia. Other than reading city signs posted on the highway and being told that you live in Harrisonburg,how do you know that everyone is not lying to you about your geographical location for some reason? All of what you know could be false and your life could be a set up just like in The Truman Show.

So how do you know what is true and what is not? There are ways of testing truth and ways of knowing. The ways of knowing are through; sense perception, reason, emotion, and language. Sense perception can be used to test truth by using your senses such as sight, if you see somthing it has to be true, right? Take a look at the picture of the elephant in this link.

(http://lundissimo.info/imgs/puzzles/puzzles.html) How many legs does it have?

Your sense perceptions can decive you at sometimes. Language is an innate attribute and is a main component of transfering knolowdge. It is impossible to think with out knowldge, and you must think in order to determine truth. Reason or logic is used to set principles of truth, and is used to question statments for thier validity and truth. When someone makes a claim to know, it is legitimate to ask for reasons and to expect that these will be coherent. Emotion infleunces our thoughts, behaviour, and steers the pursuit of knowledge. Emotions are key to self-understanding and to understanding the world.

Writing Habits: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

A habit can be defined as an automatic pattern of behavior in reaction to a specific situation. We all have habits for a variety of situations, some good and some bad. When it comes to writing I tend to flow away from the traditional writing process. I believe just like in other situations I have both good and bad writing habits.

I’ll start with the ugly; I am a procrastinator to the fullest. I tend to wait till the last minute literally late at night, and also right before a writing assignment is due. I have done this for a while now and over time it has developed into a bad habit, one that I hope I can get rid of. Another not so good habit when I do when I write is I don’t put my thoughts down on paper, I try to remember and store them in my head and try recover those thoughts and use them later on in a paper. I have so many thoughts going on through my head about what I’m writing about and I tend think about sentences and thoughts I’m going to use in the last paragraph instead of thinking about the current paragraph I’m on. Another bad habit that goes along with procrastination is while I am writing I take frequent breaks. So after a few sentences I will get up and do something, sometimes it will be a quick break others not so quick. I think this is good and bad for me; instead of writing something that could take me an hour it will take me a day, but also taking breaks refreshes my mind.

Now there are some good writing techniques I use that are unique. I follow the writing process to an extent I just add my own little twist to it. I pre write and plan in my head, I think about what my writing topic and form complete thought out sentences in my head. I also plan out how my paper is going to flow and how the paragraphs are going to be structured. Before I even begin to write something I will have the first paragraph complete stored in my head.

There are some techniques and habits I would like to develop. For example I would like to find away to organize my thoughts and ideas and write them down on paper instead of trying to remember all of them. I would also like to improve on my revising and editing skills, I usually never go back and take a second look at what I have written. Just like any habit it takes time and practice to overcome the bad and develop the good.

The Kitchen

The kitchen in my house was used for than just simply eating; it was probably the only place in the house where you could find my all of my family together at once. My mom spent the most time in the kitchen; whether she was cooking, cleaning, or just reading the mail, my mom was always in the kitchen and she made sure it was exactly how she wanted it to be. Before we moved into our house while it was being built my mom would take me with her to the Home Depot Expo design center where she spent countless hours and days choosing appliances and custom designing our house. She chose everything from the granite, to the tiles, to the type of wood for the cabinets, the appliances, the hinges, the sink, and the furniture and accessories. After this very drawn out process was finished and our kitchen was complete I think my little sister described it best when she said it look like a kitchen found in a castle. The room was very elegant but also had a warm feeling to it at the same time. The tiles were a rich creamy off white marble with swirls, the cabinets were made from dark cherry wood, and the appliances were all stainless steel, the granite which was my favorite part was shimmery black with speckles of gold and silver, reminding me of a black galaxy in outer space. We had a large round kitchen table that was steel with a glass top surrounded by large steel chairs with white padding, so large that when I was very young I would have a hard time scooting the chair out to sit in it. And over the table was this chandelier that would light up the kitchen like a flame lit in a cave. My mom also had plants all over the kitchen and glass jars filled with vegetables used for decoration. And when we would all come together for dinner and sit down at the table I would feel like the kitchen was the only room in the house and all was forgotten.