Tala Hughes
Mrs. Martin
DC English Comp. 111
20 November 2015
“Ground Zero”
Paragraph Summaries 1. Berne is visiting Manhattan’s financial district for the first time to give respect to the tragedy that took place there at the World Trade Center. 2. There were people from all over the world and of all ages there to visit the site. 3. Although it may seem like you are looking at nothing, you are really looking at the absence of what used to be. 4. To a tourist, the site simply looks like a construction site. 5. Looking at the site even gives off the vibe that construction gives, of hope and curiosity. 6. Then your eyes adjust to the most striking part about the scene: the light. 7. Berne compares ground zero to a bowl of light, empty yet vast. What is missing becomes clearer as a watery glow from the light reflecting off the Hudson River covers everything. 8. Suddenly, she starts to see the tragedy, including the firefighters and the boarded windows. 9. Suddenly, the cemetery is visible, along with all of the personal belongings and headstones. 10. It takes time to see the tragedy and make sense of it all. 11. An old man near her is trying to explain to her son how he saw the site before the towers were even built. 12. It is clear many people are dissatisfied with being able to express only vague expressions. 13. Most of the people were picturing what they saw in the media, with the towers with black smoke around them. 14. Berne decided to get tickets for the viewing platform to get a better idea of the scene and had to ask dozens of people and cops for directions. 15. Berne watched a bad juggler as she waited at the ticket kiosk for the next available viewing in four hours. 16. She left and went to a deli and waited by a glass window with her pastrami sandwich. 17. She finally got her ticket. 18. She could see firefighters honoring remains that were found in the pit. 19. Everyone in the dining room stopped eating out of respect. 20. Berne realized that all of the visitors were filling the spot where so many lives were lost.
Comprehension
1. She means that she goes from seeing just the empty space to seeing what was missing in that space. 2. It takes a while for all of the emotions to sink in and to get a good visualization of the site. 3. The media pictures of ground zero were different than seeing it in person because the media displays the photos of the tower falling with smoke everywhere and seeing it in person is just an emptiness. 4. Ground zero is this quiet, empty space in the large, busy city of Manhattan. Berne reacts to this contrast by feeling a stronger emotion towards ground zero. 5. In the conclusion, Berne is expressing how the site is in a way being repopulated with visitors, because the site is so empty. I feel like she is being very serious when discussing this topic and is not using any sarcasm.
Purpose and Audience 1. I feel like Berne states her thesis in her opening sentence, “On a cold, damp March morning, I visited Manhattan’s financial district, a place I’d never been, to pay my respects at what used to be the World Trade Center.” I think she states it to avoid any confusion on the topic. In my own words, Berne’s thesis is “I visited ground zero to give respect to the tragedy.” 2. Berne’s purpose in this essay is to express the emotions that one feels when seeing the breathtaking site of what was lost. 3. Berne assumes that her readers know what ground zero is and what happened at the world trade center.
Style and Structure 1. Berne begins by saying that she has never been to Manhattan to explain that she never saw the towers when they were there. 2. Berne uses a chronological organization scheme, which benefits her by keeping the sequence of events in order but has a disadvantage of having to stick to the order to avoid digression and confusion. 3. She describes ground zero in so many ways because there are various ways to see it depending on one’s emotional stand point of the tragedy. 4. The space in between paragraphs 17 and 18 allows a shift from simply looking at the site to looking into the site. 5. She ends her essay describing the people on the platform to explain that many people came to this site and are having unique experience all together. I think she feels the need to include these observations to show the reader how many people are having this effect. 6. The repetition of the word suddenly in paragraph 9 creates the effect of all of the senses and emotions flooding and overwhelming her all at once. She could have achieved this effect another way by quickly listing how she was feeling at that moment.
Vocabulary
1. Shearling: a skin from a recently sheared sheep or lamb that has been tanned and dressed with the wool left on. 2. Potent: having great power, influence, or effect. 3. Periphery: the outer limits or edge of an area or object. 4. Laminated: overlay (a flat surface, especially paper) with a layer of plastic or some other protective material. 5. Devastation: great destruction or damage. 6. Incredulousness: incredulous is an adjective that means not disposed or willing to believe; unbelieving. If you are incredulous that means you can't or won't believe something. 7. Repopulation: the total number of persons inhabiting a country, city, or any district or area.

“No Wonder They Call Me A Bitch”
Paragraph Summary 1. Hodgman has always been curious about the different types of dog foods. 2. She now has a better understanding on dog foods after spending a week tasting various types. 3. She has always been intrigued by Gaines-burgers dog food when she was a kid, and felt excited to be able to try it. 4. That brand has, “Dogs love real beef!” exclaimed on the packaging and she was fascinated to find out that it does include real beef yet not real poultry. 5. A Purina spokesman informed Ann on what actually is in poultry by-product and expressed his fear for her eating dog food. 6. She described the look of a Gains-burger as a red patty made out of Play-Doh. 7. Ann heated up a skillet for the patty while she formed the cheese into a small bird and ate it. 8. The cheese tasted like a tangy cheddar with a soy after taste. She contrasts the textures of the cheese a fresh play-doh and the patty as old play-doh. 9. The patty did not cook like an actual burger and just turned black. When put into the sink, it drained red-dye. 10. The burger was nothing compared to the canned dog food. She feels like whenever she’ll use the can opener, she will be spreading the animal by-product. 11. Gaines had different cycles of canned food, 1 for puppies, 2 for adults, 3 is low fat, and 4 is for older dogs. 1 was mush and wet, 2 was fatty and meaty, and 3 was virtually tasteless. 12. Cycle 4 had small nuggets that tasted almost like baked-beans that a Purina spokesman once called the “dried beef digest” as “enzymes.” 13. Next she tried Kal Kan Pedigree Chunky Chicken that was brown chunks with a meatloaf texture. 14. For canned dog food, smooth consistency means low quality and chunky lumps mean high quality. The highest quality of canned food that she tried was the Kal Kan Pedigree Select Dinners which came in small foil and tasted like canned hash, even though the grey veined chunks were alarming. 15. Ann was eager to try dry dog food, and the Gravy Train was the first. The gravy was basically just tap water and not very beefy at all. 16. The Butcher’s Bland is a dry dog food where the different bites are marked with either a T for beef, a curl for chicken, or an S for bacon. 17. Purina O.N.E. is for people that want to feed their dogs quality food without putting much thought into it. 18. Hodgman likes that O.N.E. provides a nutritional benefits list for everything that is in the food. 19. She actually liked the O.N.E. whether it is the extra fat it has or the clever packaging. 20. Dog snacks are much better tasting than dog foods and each has a unique saying to attract buyers. 21. Hodgman lined up all seven of the milkbone treat flavors and did not taste any difference between them. 22. She prefers Bonz bone with simulated marrow, which tasted like cornmeal but she felt uneasy about the marrow part. 23. She makes a note to answer any questions. 24. A question is asked about the sizzling word “beef” on the packaging. 25. She states that that type of thing never happens. 26. A question is asked about the comparison of cat food. 27. Canned cat food was a bit more chicken-tasting than the dog food. 28. A question is asked about any dog food that she wasn’t willing to try. 29. Hodgeman was unwilling to try Mighty Dog and gave it to raccoons.
Comprehension
1. Hodgman decided to try eating dog food simply because she was curious about it. I do not find her motives convincing because dog food is gross for a person to eat. 2. Even if the packaging is beautiful and exciting, dog food is still dog food. 3. Hodgman disliked Mighty Dog the least and wouldn’t even bring herself to try it. She liked the Purina O.N.E. the best. 4. Hodgman describes the packaging on dog food as very elaborate and pretty trying to attract consumers. The advertising tries to convey how good the good tastes.
Purpose and Audience 1. The essay has an implied thesis. The thesis is not explicitly stated because it would seem too strong to just say, “I tried dog food for a week because I wanted to.” 2. Hodgeman is trying to create the dominant impression that she is tasting the dog foods to see if their tastes really comply with the packaging. 3. I think Hodgman expects her readers to react in a disgusted way because of the topic, which is shown in how graphically she describes the tastes, textures, and looks of the dog foods. These expectations just cause her to become even more graphic in her descriptions.
Style and Structure
My reaction to the title was shock because I wasn’t expecting such vulgar language. The advantage of using the word can cause readers to see the ironic humor and a disadvantage is that it could cause readers to not want to read the story. 1. The details are arranged by the different types of dog food, like canned to dry. I feel like organization would be better going from least tasteful to most tasteful. 2. I feel like she fully describes how the dog foods taste and that there is no possible room, for any more detail. If she was any more detailed, we would basically be eating the food ourselves. 3. Hodgeman uses mostly similies in her essay, such as, “…it tasted primarily like tap water, so it wasn’t nauseating either.” These help explain to the reader what the foods tasted like, looked like, and felt like. 4. I think Hodgman ends her essay answering questions because when discussing such an odd topic, it is obvious that there will be questions.
Vocabulary
1. By-products: an incidental or secondary product made in the manufacture or synthesis of something else. 2. Carcass: the dead body of an animal. 3. Palatable: (of food or drink) pleasant to taste. 4. Malleable: easily influenced; pliable. 5. Extrusions: a process used to create objects of a fixed cross-sectional profile. A material is pushed through a die of the desired cross-section. 6. Rivulets: a very small stream. 7. Unsavory: disagreeable to taste, smell, or look at. 8. Imperious: assuming power or authority without justification; arrogant and domineering. 9. Rancid: (of foods containing fat or oil) smelling or tasting unpleasant as a result of being old and stale. 10. Arcane: understood by few; mysterious or secret. 11. Semiotics: the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation. 12. Kitschy: something that appeals to popular or lowbrow taste and is often of poor quality; a tacky or lowbrow quality or condition

“The Hidden Life of Garbage”
Paragraph Summaries 1. Garbage trucks collect the trash early in the morning into the trucks compacting unit, which is taken to the garbage depot when it gets full. 2. Land dumping is very popular in the U.S. because it is so cheap. They are often away from the public. 3. The landfills are hidden from the public because if they say the destruction, they would get concerned. 4. Where the dumping takes place is called the “working face” and is covered with trash and smells pungent. 5. GROWS, geological reclamation operations and wastes systems, is a new breed called “mega-fills.” It is the largest recipient of New York City’s waste. 6. WMI is in the old Warner Company grounds, where they mined the area for gravel and sand. Now, they fill it with waste. 7. On top of the GROWS landfill, trucks dump twenty four tons each into the pile, and is every now and then compacted with a giant “landfill compactor.” 8. Once you are away from the landfill, it is hard to know it is there because any small trash is caught with the litter net and the smell is brought down with a spray mixture. 9. New landfills line the cells with a giant liner that collects the waste water runoff which is taken to a treatment facility. 10. Once a cell is filled, it is capped off with dirt, clay and the liner. 11. New regulations make sites like GROWS less harmful, yet still pose long term issues. The liners are expected to last about thirty to fifty years, which could possibly be enough time for the owner to not be blamed for any contamination. 12. Waste treatment facilities are expensive operations that try to stay green and keep up with the latest regulation, yet always seem like they’re hiding something. 13. The harder that the facilities try, the more it seems like we need to reduce our waste.
Comprehension
1. Landfills are hidden from the public so they don’t raise any concern. 2. The landfills working face is the top where the trash is dumped. Compared to other parts of the landfill, this is where the most action and commotion takes place. 3. Rogers thinks GROWS is aptly named because it is supposed to have a positive connotation for a negative system. Rogers thinks it is ironic. 4. New state of the are landfills pose dangers such as having toxic waste water leak into the water supply. 5. The repressed question that is not being asked is, “what if we didn’t have so much trash to get rid of?”
Purpose and Audience 1. Rogers states her thesis in the concluding paragraph, which helps her emphasize the importance of the amount of trash we are producing. 2. Rogers tries to create the dominant impression that it is inevitable for garbage to be toxic, regardless of how high tech the waste facilities become. 3. Roger’s attitude towards waste is negative and that people shouldn’t be creating so much garbage. She also feels that garbage facilities are just as bad.
Style and Structure 1. Rogers specifically describes how the garbage trucks pick up the waste bins and dump and cram the trash in the collector. The description is an opening for something that most people are used to seeing happen to or garbage, and leads into something that we are not used to seeing. 2. Roger arranged her essay from less gruesome into most gruesome, leading into more horrible thoughts of what could happen with our garbage in landfills. 3. The essay gives objective descriptions when explaining how the garbage trucks and landfills work, and subjective descriptions when describing how she feels about the waste. 4. Rogers puts the phrase “environmentally responsible” in quotation marks to show sarcasm. 5. I feel like she doesn’t need to offer a solution because her purpose is to just raise awareness. However, I feel like she would have a more effective essay if she did offer one.
Vocabulary
1. Hydraulic: operated, moved, or brought about by means of water <hydraulic pressure 2. Rejectramenta: things rejected : a quantity of rejects : rubbish, refuse, wrack. 3. Sequestered: (of a place) isolated and hidden away. 4. Hydroseeded: a planting process that uses a slurry of seed and mulch. It is often used as an erosion control technique on construction sites, as an alternative to the traditional process of broadcasting or sowing dry seed. 5. Butte: an isolated hill with steep sides and a flat top (similar to but narrower than a mesa) 6. Aptly: something done in a competent, appropriate or suitable way. An example of an aptly named landform is the Grand Canyon. 7. Fetid: smelling extremely unpleasant. 8. Putrescence: the state or process of rotting or putrefying 9. Cascades: a small waterfall, typically one of several that fall in stages down a steep rocky slope. 10. Leach: (with reference to a soluble chemical or mineral) drain away from soil, ash, or similar material by the action of percolating liquid, especially rainwater. 11. Encapsulate: enclose (something) in or as if in a capsule. 12. Palpable: able to be touched or felt; clear to the mind or plain to see. 13. Lavish: sumptuously rich, elaborate, or luxurious. 14. Obliteration: the action or fact of obliterating or being obliterated; total destruction.