reading response #3

I picked the essay Edward Hopper’s Office at Night: A Close Reading from the section Telling Stories because I really enjoy the artists idea of having the viewer decide the story and pick what they think is happening. He puts two a male and a female in a room together and lets you think about what is happening. When I first looked at this picture I got the idea that it was a man that is more than likely having an affair with his good looking secretary. I thought this way because of the way they have her standing and they way that she is dressed. I feel like in her mind she is trying to think of a way that she can provocatively pick up the piece of paper that has fallen on the ground to grab the man at the desk working attention. As I read the article I soon learned that this is how a lot of people viewed the picture, and for another reason other than the things that I just have noted, for example the wind blowing in through the window the artist, Edward Hopper, used that has a metaphor for touch. So that makes me think of in another scene of this story they would probably be touching. Something that I read that was interesting that someone else had interpreted the picture is that the woman is the big boss and the man behind the desk is he assistant, which very well might be true. Hopper did many different permutation, or sketches, of this picture where he had just a woman in the picture and then when he added the man he moved them around and had the two of them viewed from different viewpoints. He had one viewpoint being from a window so it would like the viewer was looking in at the two together through a window. I think that that would have made the picture more interesting because then the viewer could have became the husband or wife of the man and women in the office, which would have made it more so like it was an affair going on and the husband or wife was checking in on them. This of course would limit the possibilities of what the picture was about and I don’t think that’s what this author wanted to do. He said in the essay that “if you could say it, there’d be no reason to paint” and I think he liked to leave the story open for people to decide what’s going on.

Survey reflection

For my survey, I found most interesting how many people did not check the water that they drink. Only about 30% of the people that took my survey said that they frequently check their household water. So that means that 70% of people out there could be drinking contaminated water. That really shocked me to think of people not caring that they could be drinking some really gross things. Another thing that shocked me that I learned from my survey is that there really isn’t that many people out there that know the water treatment process, about an average of 45% of people said they knew the waste water treatment process and the consequences that came from the water not being treated properly. Something I would do differently when making a survey for a research paper is that I would think up better questions to ask people with more of boarder of answers other than saying they are “very aware” or they do something “very often” this made my use of this information very limited as to how I could put the facts into my paper. All I really could do is use it as percentages like how I did in the beginning of this paragraph here. Where the information I got from it was very useful I feel like I could have gotten a lot more information if I asked the questions and wrote the answers out differently.

Reading Response #2

Telling Stories
Nora Ephron
The Boston Photographs


I chose this essay to write on because I was about photojournalism and I am very interested in photojournalism. I wasn’t quite sure which essay I wanted to write on this time so I looked in the index and there was the section on photojournalism. So I went to the section and looked at the pictures in it. The pictures of this woman falling out off a fire escape at the top of the building really grabbed my attention so I had to read the essay to learn what had happened.
The main idea in this essay was the uproar that these pictures caused in the media. Some people thought that they were inappropriate to publish in a public newspaper because they were so raw. What had happened was there was a fire in a five story building in Boston and Nor Ephron was there to take pictures. She was in the right place at the right time was able to get the perfect view of a fireman going to rescue a woman and her child. Without anyone knowing the fire escaped gave out and the women and her child fell. Ephron continued to take pictures of this happening and was able to capture three, the first of the woman, child and fireman on the fire escape, the next the fire escape breaking, and then lastly the woman and child falling five stories to the pavement below, she then turned around not wanted to see the final outcome. The woman did end up dying on impact while the child landed on the mother and did not die. People thought that publishing these photos made death seem like a form of entertainment, which is not the case at all. The public know that only in extreme cases will the press publish a picture of a dead body in the newspaper and they felt since this woman was so close to her death that it was pretty much the same thing. Ephron felt like she did a good deed as to showing the dangers of fire escaped and because of this story many fire escapes were checked out.
I think that these pictures did exactly what they were supposed to, grab peoples attention. Not so much as an entertainment purpose but for people to be more aware of the dangers that is out there. Ephron was not trying to publish these to be grotesque she is just an example of what a good photojournalist is. Sometimes you see stuff you don’t want to see but the story has to go out there.

Hanna Instrument Pictures

catalog for Hanna


Chemicals for testing different things in water



Meters for reading different chemicals in water


Chemicals to test water


Meters for testing water

screen shot reflection

What came to my mind in seeing my first reading response essay was ending up being around 409 words is that, a 409 word essay is not a lot of writing. It easily all fits onto the screen, when it’s not double spaced. The assignment was given to us as having to be at least 300 words and when I first read that I was concerned that I was not going to be able to write that much. Once I started writing it just all came out and next thing I knew I had wrote one paragraph and it was 150 words.
I think that composing changes shape in digital spaces by it makes things a lot neater and easier to read. It makes it so that all your lines are straight and the indents on the pages even. It makes it fair to all students in class to write a certain page amount essay since the teacher can specify the font size and the style of the font. Anything hand written can be any vary amount of sizes and 3 pages for someone could be a lot shorter amount of essay than someone else who may write bigger.
To better understand digital composing I think people, grade schools, and universities are taking proper steps to getting everyone to this point of doing all writing on the computer. There are required classes in both middle schools and high schools to make students more comfortable with using the computer. Even though younger generations are pretty much raised with computer so they are already comfortable. For the adults new to using the computer there is classes everywhere that you can take to help get better and used to writing on the computer rather then by hand. There is also help functions in almost all computer composing programs that can help you step by step in writing a good paper. I think in the near future everyone will be expected to know how to compose a paper on the computer.

reading response #1

Depicting Identities
Home Movies


I started reading this essay because the introduction of it pulled me in, and I could not resist reading it. It talked about looking at old photographs and/or home movies of things in the past and it helping you bring back old memories of things that have happened in your past. Certain things that have happened in your past maybe hard to remember until you find something to remind you of it, it maybe someone talking about it or coming across old pictures or home movies that were made like how Judith Cofer did in this essay. She found an old video of a party she had went to with her parents and it brought back many different memories of her growing up as a Puerto Rican child that moved to New York with her family because of her father joining the navy to make money for their ever growing family. The old home movie of the party helped bring back memories from when she was about 3 years old up until about her teenage years.
In this essay I really enjoyed how she would jump back and forth from the video that she had watched to filling in the history about what was going on before the party. I like how she described her house and the neighborhood that she was living in. Another part of this essay that I liked hearing about is how her father wanted to give them the best life and make sure they were safe and got what they wanted, for example the nice clothing from Penny’s and Sears, and him wanting to move them into a better neighborhood. Although the mother didn’t want this, she missed the comfort that the island brought her and did anything she could to get back the feeling of home. She shopped at the local markets for the groceries that she needed, so she could get the same food items that she would have had at home and she could talk to the other women that lived the same building as they did. All of this that she did was against the father’s wishes.
I could relate to this essay because just like Cofer did, I use old pictures and home videos to relive and remember certain parts of my life that are a little hazy. I think it’s a good idea for everyone to take some free time and remember certain parts of their past, especially the good ones.