Megan Rohr
MENG 5050
Week 9 writing exercises
Dr. Timothy Conrad
October 30, 2012
Kolln, Chapter 9, Exercise 29 (page 183)
1. It came as a complete surprise when my roommate told me she was planning to withdraw from
school.
2. The weather service had not predicted that the first snowstorm of the season in Denver would
be both early and severe.
3. It took over four years to complete the conversion of the library’s central card catalog to a
computer system.
4. Some observers considered it inappropriate when the president had some harsh wordsfor
Congress in his recent press conference.
5. Harriet was unhappy that Wendell didn’t want to stay for the second alf of the game.
6. We will probably have hot dogs for the rest of the month because we are having company for
dinner three times this week.
7. One economist labeled the preisdent’s State of the Union message as “sheer hype and
hyperbole” because the president characterized the last two years as a period of
“unprecedented prosperity.”
8. It should come as good new to everyone concerned about the environment that the Brailian
government has grudgingly agreed to consider new policies regarding the rain forests.
Dinty, chapter 17, Writing the Nature Essay
There is a pot of dead wheat grass on the kitchen table. A centerpiece. An art, some would say.
Dead, I would argue.
It amuses me—yes, in a sarcastic and not-too-proud-of-myself way—that we can decorate our
homes with dead things but we become emotional and unreasonable remnats of a formerly logical
human being when we are forced into proximity with a human death.
We send our grandparents or parents to homes. We take our pets to be euthanized. We see
grief counselors when tragedy strikes. We abandon jobs, homes, responsibilities to survivors, and
sometimes even reason itself when death knocks on our proverbially door—nevermind that on that
door is a bouquet of dead corn husks, a clear recognition of cycles of life.
Bitterness aside, perhaps there is a lesson to be learned from this proximity to dead things that
are seen as unimportant. What if we embraced a grandparents’ death as we embraced the fall harvest
and the bouqet of corn husks? We never stop to ponder how we might feel if there is never live corn
stalks again because we know that there will be. We don’t mourn for the dead and dried rose behind
glass in the living room because it is simply unreasonable to think that perhaps there will never again be
a single rose in our lives. And so, what if we hung the grandfather’s cane on the coat rack by the door
and put the mother’s favorite picture on the wall and pretended we were corn stalks that don’t seem to
worry that there will never be corn again?
Dinty, chapter 18, Writing the Travel Essay
Travel changes people. And situations. I am somewhat surprised by this sudden thought but it
comes with a gentle feeling of acceptance—it’s one of those thoughts that feels right, like something I’m
only just recognizing but that I’ve known for a length of time.
I’m sitting on the steps of a fountain on Picadilly Circus. There are two grandparents with me—
they took me in when I ran away from home in high school. There is a son of those grandparents—he’s
ten years my senior and has been in love with me since he met me eight years ago. There is a daughter
of those grandparents—her husband and their children, the three of which have no idea how to refer to
me because I’m not an aunt or a sibling but I call their grandparents “Grandma” and “Grandpa.” There is
also a granddaughter of the grandparents—her half sister hates me for reasons that most of the family
considers vain and shallow, but are nevertheless recognizable offenses in the world of teenage females.
Limits on lodging mean that all the kids and singles have to spread out between a living room
and a single bedroom. It was quickly decided that the oldest son—the single son—would be allowed to
have the bedroom and the rest—including the non-family member—would take the couches and floors.
To me, this is interesting, and not a little bit awkward. In my family, the stranger gets the bedroom—the
privacay. The family, however crowded, stays together. Family is family. Nonfamily is not family.
This rooming situation makes me more family than not, but if I’m family then what would it
mean if the son—the single son—were to declare romantic intentions? Am I family? Am I available for
romantic pursuit?
It amuses me how a forced rooming situation is so complicated and uncomplicated. For me, it is.
For them, it doesn’t appear to be. I don’t want to be near the single son or encourage any sort of
overtures. The grandparents, who are funding the trip, seem to say I am just another of the children—I
can sleep with the grandkids.
It’s a complication I don’t have to find an answer with on this trip. I just see that it’s there. I see
that travel has changed it—not necessarily for better or worse, just different. One of those byproducts
of traveling that we don’t recognize until we are forced out of norms and find ourselves groping blindly
for new norms on which to find equilibrium.