Response Paper #2: Home Away From Home

­This past year I went to the North Eastern tip of California to hunt for black tail deer. The place that we went to was not fancy; it didn’t have any thing you think a campground would have. The campground was just dirt a trees but it had so much history. My father and his friend have been going there for well over thirty years. The trees were dying from the drought and the dirt was so dry it felt like concrete. There were all types of birds and other animals around us at all times. The grass was tall and dead. Whenever I stepped on it I could here the crunch of the grass crumbling like potato chips. I visited this place to go hunting. I always hunt in Montana but never had the chance to hunt California until this past year. This is a place that has nobody around for fifty miles or more. Nobody lives here and the only person you may come across is other hunter but that is very unlikely. This area is best known for its hunting. Since it is so isolated and nothing is developed the land is all-natural. When one goes here there are many obstacles to over come. The first is being able to get a car in there. The roads are more like cattle trails and every twenty feet you have to get out and move a giant rock. The land is beautiful though. There are giant canyons that have hundred feet drop offs and valleys that look like a storybook picture when the sun sets behind them. I saw a deer on the skyline when the sun was setting and may have been one of the most majestic things I have ever witnessed. While I was there I did a lot of hunting and hiking. Walking thirty or so miles everyday you see a lot. Like I previously said I saw canyons and large valleys. I saw so much wildlife I lost count of the deer I saw and there were so many different types of birds I couldn’t tell you how many different species I saw. I would love to go back here. It is places like this were I feel the most calm and most safe. I am not in the city surrounded by man made things and I am just enjoying the simple things in life. It is a place like this I feel like I am at home. If I could go anywhere in the world I would want to go to the heart of Africa. I have always loved Africa and have always been fascinated with the way the land looks and all the amazing animals that they have there. It is like nothing else I have ever seen and it one of a kind. There are things there you cannot find anywhere else on this planet. It has always been my dream to go there and someday I will.

Visual Rhetoric: The First Car of NASCAR

Matthew Haulot

Jen Fleischer

English 1A

21 March 2014

The First Car of NASCAR

Creating an object that makes a message obvious is a hard thing to do. The material that goes into making the object matters greatly. Everything that the object is made out of says something about the meaning or message of the object. It describes it in a certain way and creates a tone for it. The size of the object matters because it gives it meaning, the bigger the object, the bigger the meaning may be. Art doesn’t come easy, it takes time and there are a lot of difficulties to overcome in order to make it just right and in order to make it portray the exact message that the artist wants to get across. The amount of time and effort that goes into a piece of art is never truly known by anyone beside the artist because only they know the true meaning behind it.

            The object that I created was a replica of an old style stock car from the forties. It shows that it is an old style stock car from all the different colors and the shape of the body. To a regular person who is uneducated about the different style of bodies it may be hard to see but the long front nose of the car is only something that was around in the early days of the sport. The different colors of the car show how teams would use anything they could to put a car together. I used the colors to show that it was different pieces put together to create one. The surface that the car sits on is made of really slick, unsteady putty. This putty resembles the unsafe surface that the cars use to race on. Just like the putty is unstable, the cars used to be unstable in the first years of NASCAR. The tone of my sculpture is playful, the colors and the material is what makes it playful. The colors are bright and welcoming while the material has a texture that makes it feel soft and lively. The texture of my object is soft and as a result it is very delicate. It crushes under easy pressure. The material that the car sits on is soft and slick showing unsteadiness. The intended audience for my object is anyone who is interested in racers or cars in general. It would probably catch the eye of a young child because of the colors and the material but an old eye would notice the meanings worked into the art and see past the colors and soft texture. When creating this object I knew it

would be hard to persuade the audience in an emotional way strictly based on the fact that a car cannot always be the most emotional thing.  I had to get my message across by showing logical sense in the way I shaped and built my car. I couldn’t just through something together; it took time and thought to find out what I wanted it to look like because in my mind I had a certain image that I wanted to create once I heard about the assignment. This is the type of object that one would see in a children’s room because of the color once again. It looks like a toy one would buy at Toys R Us, or some store like that. Although it would not be easily understandable by a child, it would not matter because they would look past the meaning and straight to the visual appearance. In a different atmosphere my object may mean something different but it is definitely something that you would see in a child’s room.

            Throughout the process of making my object I came across many different obstacles. The first obstacle that I came across was what my object would be. I thought about doing a checkered flag but I could not think about how I would make that into a symbol. Once I came up with idea to build a car I realized I could make a message out of it. The second challenge was to decide what I wanted to make my object out of. I needed to pick something that would hold up and be able to have a meaning behind it. The first type of material that I tried making my car out of was a sort of putty. When I was making my car for the first time I was hoping that the putty would hold up and stay standing but it only stood for a matter of seconds before it started tumbling down like a piece of ice melting under a flame. After that I knew I could not make a standing object out of the putty and would need something much stronger and more stable. The point was to find a material

that was fragile yet sturdy. When I started my second attempt, this time using play dough, I realized I found the material that I needed all along. It was sturdy, yet not too firm, and it was easily malleable to create anything I wanted.

With all the work I have put into creating my object, both mentally and physically, I believe that I deserve a good grade. A reasonable grade for myself would be a B+ or an A-. I know that my artwork is not the greatest and that it could be better but this is not an art class so the important thing is to see what the meaning of the object is. In my own mind I believe that I did a great job at describing my object and telling the audience what my object means. I created it in a way that looks simple but there are so many features that were created with a specific purpose in mind. For example, the different colors of the car represent how car owners and drivers would take pieces from a bunch of junk cars and create one working car. This is not something that is seen right away, it is something that the viewer will have to look at for a while. This is another reason why I believe I deserve a good grade. I created an object that does not have an obvious meaning. Good art takes time to figure out and that is what I created.

Creating a piece of art that has true meaning behind it is a very large task to accomplish. The audience or viewers do not understand how much work went into creating that object. They do not understand the exact meaning of the art; only the artiest knows the true meaning of the work. Before starting my project I had no idea that the type of material would be important but once I started thinking about it I realized that it really did matter. The material that makes up art is what gives it the meaning that the artist is trying to convey. Art is not an easy thing to create but when the finished project is complete, the outcome is grand and unique because all artwork has its meaning and its own unique style.

Matt's Art Project

This is a picture of my object. It is built to resemble a old school stock car from the forties. The four different colors resemble how owners and drivers would take any part and put it together to make a working racecar. Not everything was perfect back then, they used what they had. The car is made out of play dough to resemble the delicacy of a racecar. Just like a racecar, play dough is also fragile and easy to break.

Annotation of "The Everyday Writer": Pages 48-58 123-151

            In the first part of the reading it discussed how to write in a rhetorical situation. The key is to connect to the writing either through an extended, responsive, or challenging way. Make sure to plan the topic and the message of the assignment because this will be the main idea of the paper. The choice is usually the instructors but sometimes the choice could be yours. Don’t hesitate about picking your topic. Make sure to pick something that actually interests you and that is exciting to learn about because it makes writing and doing the assignment much easier. Think about what the audience already knows about the topic and if the style will be formal or informal. Presentation is a huge part of everything but in this case it is especially important. Pick a clear and concise language to present it in and pay attention to time, length, genre, tone, and style. All of these have their own way of being very effective.

            The second set of readings talks about analyzing and reviewing texts. When analyzing a text try to know everything possible about it including the background on the author. Look to see if the author is creditable for the work they have done. Read and take careful notes on the text. This is the most important thing one can do to make an effective paper. Look at the text from all aspects. Who is the author? What is the format of the writing? When all this is completed make a summary of the main ideas. Look at the main points and question them. Check the understanding of the points and don’t ever trust or distrust a source without looking into it yourself. The next step is to look at the appeal of the text. Is it emotional, ethical, logical, or analyze? If these steps are followed finding the perfect source should be easy and fast.

            

Final Draft: Genre Analysis

Matthew Haulot

Jen Fleischer

English 1A, Section 5

3 March 2014

NASCAR as a Sport

            Many people say that NASCAR is not a sport; well it is in many ways. From the technical aspects of the car and physical aspects of being the driver, NASCAR is arguably more of a sport than baseball or football. A writer from the University of North Carolina talks about the history of the sport and how far it has come. Racing is probably the most underrated sport out there and a picture from a race in Bristol, Tennessee shows that with a packed house and forty-three roaring cars. There are so many different types of writings about NASACR, including news articles, newspapers, magazines, books, videos, and even websites, which I will discuss later on. All of these types of writings have their own strengths but I have picked the three that give the best perception, an academic article, a photograph, and a website. In the following essay there will be examples of what makes NASCAR a sport and how the drivers are considered athletes. Also there will be different texts examined that look at how these different genres of text differ from one another. Different documents have different meanings but the key is to find those documents that have the best information and can leave an image or idea in your head, those are the ones that will tell you most about your topic.

            The first of three genres of text we will look at is called, The Most Southern Sport on Earth, by Dan Pierce. The tone of this article is informative. It talks about how NASCAR got started and how it has progressed over time to become one of the fastest growing sports in the world. The great thing about the article is that the language is easy to follow. Being previously knowledgeable with all this information it was very easy for me to follow but I found it so easy that even if I wasn’t educated on the information it would still be easy to understand. One thing that makes this article so easy to follow is the way that Pierce uses images to show the history of the sport. The visual images that he uses puts a great picture in the readers head that it almost makes it impossible to forget what he is trying to say. Daniel S. Pierce is a professor at the University of North Carolina. This makes Pierce very creditable and something else that gives him even more credit is the fact that this is not the only piece of writing that Pierce has written on NASCAR. He has written two other books, one being called, Real NASCAR, and the other being NASCAR vs. Football: Which Sport Is More Important to the South? Just the fact the Pierce has written two other books on the same subject shows that he is not only dedicated to the topic but also well knowledgeable about the topic. An example that Pierce gives is how NASCAR did not have any organization when they first started. Track owners and promoters said they would increase track safety and increase the track conditions but never actually did them. Compared to today this has changed one hundred percent. Pierce also talks about how the men who started NASCAR made it what it is today. Men like Bill France Sr. and Red Vogt started to make the rules of NASCAR that are still followed this day. The main message of this article is to show how far NASCAR has come. From being completely unorganized and not having any rules to changing it around in one meeting. The purpose of this article is just to show the transformation over the years and to educate people on the rich and exciting early years of NASCAR.

            The next document is a photograph from Bristol Motor Speedway at nighttime. The picture was taken by Walter Arce who is also very much like Daniel Pierce in the way that he primarily focuses on only taking pictures of NASCAR. Walter Arce is an action sports photographer showing that his main interests are sports and NASCAR being one of them. The layout of this photo is taken with the idea that you can see everything that is going on around the track. It gives you a full perspective and full understanding of the track. Like Pierce’s article this photograph has a tone. The tone of this photograph is chaos. Look at it, forty-three cars in a packed stadium, you can basically hear the roar of the cars just by looking at it. Unlike The Most Southern Sport on Earth, this photograph does not contain a language or even a specific writing style. The intended viewer is somebody who likes racing, somebody who

likes excitement and adrenaline. The type of example that Arce provides is how exciting NASCAR can look. This photo shows how many people go to the races and how big one of these events can get. There is also evidence in the picture unlike The Most Southern Sport on Earth, where you have to believe what Pierce tells you, in this photograph you can look and see it for yourself. The main argument is to show once again how big the sport can be and how exciting it can look. The purpose of this photo is to share this stunning view with everyone. This is like the Super Bowl of NASCAR and not many people get to experience it so this is a way to share that with everyone.

            The final piece of text is the NASCAR.com website. The layout of this website is very modern. The website is constantly updated and has so much information available on it that its too much to take in at one or even two sittings. The tone of NASCAR.com is very academic. There are writers that only write for the website and are constantly scribbling down new articles on the latest race or the new news that is happening in the NASCAR world. This website is very similar to Pierce’s article. They both talk about the history of the sport with the only difference being that they discuss different time periods. They are both meant to educate the reader and inform them on the topic. The intended readers are people who follow NASCAR and want to get more information on it. The NASCAR website has many different writers but the main three are David Caraviello, Brad Parrott, and Reid Spencer. They have written hundreds of articles for NASCAR and have been doing it for years. There credibility goes farther than Dan Pierces and Walter Arce. The evidence that these three writers provide is about the latest news; for example, the most recent articles that will be on the website are about the past weekends race. They will talk about the winners and the big moments that happened throughout the weekend. The message here is clear, the idea is to keep the fans involved and always let them know the latest information. The purpose of the website is not like the purpose of Pierce’s or Arce’s work, instead the purpose is to keep people informed and to try and draw new fans in by telling them the most exciting news they can give them.

            In order for a text to be effective or persuasive it has to be filled with all sorts of details and facts. This is important because a big deciding factor between a persuasive and non-persuasive text is gaining trust in your readers. If the reader trusts what the author is saying it makes everything more believable. For example in Daniel Pierce’s, The Most Southern Sport on Earth, he gives so much detail starting with his first paragraph when he describes Bill France loosening his tie and saying that he put the “fear of god” into his employees. This sentence in the opening paragraph makes me as a reader believe that what Pierce is about to tell me is good information. Pierce later goes on to tell us about how racing in the south really got started with young men working in mills and factories just trying to survive. The reason why a photograph can be so effective is because it can mean something different to anyone who looks at it; only the photographer knows the real meaning behind it.

            Out of the three documents I have gathered I have found that Daniel Pierce’s, The Most Southern Sport on Earth, to be the most effective. The other documents are persuasive and fulfilling but not as much as this one. The big thing that makes Pierce’s message so effective is that he looked at the beginning of NASCAR and all the problems that Bill France Sr. had to sort out. Pierce talked about how France stripped drivers of all their winnings and points and disqualified drivers for minor rule violations. “As drivers increasingly complained about France's iron hand, they also realized that many of his decisions benefited them” (Daniel Pierce) is a quote that shows how Pierce knows the history of the sport and that makes him a more effective writer and makes the article that much more effective. Another factor that makes this article effective is that it covers a wide range of topics. It talks about the early history of the sport and how it got started to how France created a union for the drivers and crews. The document that has the least effective message is the photograph taken by Arce. The thing that makes this the least effective document is the fact that it is just a photo and cannot tell you anymore then what you can see.

            I chose three documents that couldn’t be anymore different from each other. One is an article that talks about the history of NASCAR while the other source is a picture that shows what NASCAR is like and how it looks; while the final source is a website that talks about what is happening in the sport today. All of these documents are different from each other and focus on a different topic. The reason why these documents differ from each other is because there is such a broad range of subjects under the main idea of NASCAR. For example if Daniel Pierces article on the early days of NASCAR were to randomly start talking about this past weekends race it would not make sense. That article has one main idea and that is to talk about the early days.

            A text has three main components to it. The first component is what the topic of the text is about. This is what the text will be covering and what the text will be talking about or what the main idea of the text is. The second component is what it says. This is what the text is trying to say or what the message is. Every piece of writing has a message that it is trying to tell to the audience. This can be an informative message, a persuasive message, or an argumentative message. Depending on what the message is will determine on who the audience is and how the message will be delivered. If it is an argumentative message the delivery may be stricter and tone while an informative message may be more lay back and tranquil.

            The type of texts that people read can tell all sorts of things about them. If a man reads a garden magazine and another reads a car magazine you can tell a lot about them. Reading expresses who you are and what you like to do. Just by looking at somebody reading a book or a magazine you can tell what he or she are like and the type of person that they are. Also by reading different texts you can get a different view on topics and you learn from what you read. Reading is what gives us our knowledge so saying, “You are what you read”, is a perfectly acceptable statement.

            Finding the right articles and resources or any document for that matter is hard. It takes time; you can’t just pick out any and say its good enough. The three documents I found took time because I didn’t want to find one that said the same exact thing as one that I already had or have one that was completely off the topic I was trying to cover. Daniel Pierces, The Most Southern Sport on Earth, gave me a view of the past and left me with everything I needed to know when I was finished reading. Reading is incredibly important because it broadens your range of knowledge and opens your mind up to new things. You may look at one topic of books and think that they are all going to cover the same thing strictly based on the fact that they are all about the same topic, but once you open them up and read and analyze what they say, you realize that they all have different meaning to what the meaning really is.

Works Cited

Daniel Pierce. “The Most Southern Sport on Earth.” NASCAR and the Unions. 7:2. 2001. March 3, 2014

David Caraviello, Brad Parrott, and Reid Spencer. NASCAR.com. NASCAR. Web. March 3, 2014

Walter Arce. “Bristol Motor Speedway.” 123RF. Web. March 4, 2014