profile story

The past couple of weeks I have been wrestling with ideas of who I could do my profile story on. Thankfully that match is over as I have decided on profiling Professor Keefe. You may know him from history class as that's how I met him. You may also think he's normal at first. Keefe has been known to pick up loose change on the ground during class, scream "OLE!" every time he says Spain, and for that pipe he sometimes holds with his mouth. What really interests me though is his dislike for computers. When I got his syllabus in my first class with professor Keefe it was typed with a type writer, which he explained was because he didn't use computers. In a world where technology specifically computers, have become almost mandatory to some people's daily lives how can anybody just choose not to use computers?

Bragg

Rick Bragg's style of writing and speaking are slightly different but very effective. With each story he tells, Bragg tries to bring meaning to the reader or listener. Whether Bragg is writing or speaking there is always an audience, but what he understands is that these audiences are different. The audience that is listening gets a little more personality because Bragg is there in front of them speaking. Meanwhile the audience that's reading automatically gets a more scholarly story in writing. Personality is the kind of thing that you can hide in a speech but that Rick Bragg cannot. His stories come the troubled family that he grew up with that inspired his writings and probably drove him to be so good at what he does. Anyone that watches this speech can tell how important Bragg finds family and how valuable his family is to him not only as a son, father, or grandson, but also as a writer.Without the situation Bragg grew up in and around who knows if he'd be half the writer he is today. While Bragg's writing may be great, his speaking may be even greater. His southern accent adds to each word that comes out of his mouth and his delightful sense of humor lightens the mood a bit. Bragg may come from a broken home, but he's one solid storyteller.

Story ideas

So here are some questions that I would like to answer in the form of a story:

Why aren't Americans interested in the world's most popular sport soccer (and why are Americans the only people that call it soccer)? I played soccer most of my life (I played for St. Joe's freshman year actually) so it has always baffled me (and sort of bothered me).

Why aren't Comedy movies ever considered among the movies that get awards at prestigious movie award ceremonies such as the Golden globes, and the Oscars. If Reese Witherspoon can win best actress at the academy awards, Jamie Foxx and Nicolas Cage can win best actor there too, then why can't Will Ferrell can't win best actor in a comedy, or create a co-ed group best actor or actress in a comedy. Seeing as my interest in movies is usually comedy before anything else it has always bothered me that guys I think are just as good at what they do like Will Ferrell, John Belushi, and Seth Rogen can't get the same prestigious awards.

ROTC Piece

Join the ROTC it will be great, seriously, it's awesome you should definitely join up and so should everyone else. Pretty much all that this piece says to the reader, or at least to me. To me this is worse than getting a call from a recruiter that will talk your ear off regardless of whether your interested or not until your friend takes the phone from you and does the dirty work (thanks Fitz). Maybe I'm overreacting but an article about the oldest ROTC program in Indiana story that glorifies the program doesn't interest me. I want all the statistics not just the good ones. Not only the point of view of just students enrolled in the program that have experienced success, but also the point of view of the people who have been beaten up by the program and the people who received the opposite of success due to the program. Articles shouldn't be commercials.

Rick Bragg: The Valley of Broken Hearts

This story is awful, not poorly written but awfully sad. It is about even more Native American deaths caused by the American government that have hardly been accounted for. Many Native Americans died due to complications stemming from working at the Colorado uranium mines. The survivors, who waited 20 long years to receive any type of compensation then went through a lot of paperwork (which they may not have been educated enough to understand). Of the 300 claims approved 54 were Navajo.
This is another story about the American government barely being held accountable for the atrocities of its past. Sure these thing have happened a very long time ago in some instances, but wouldn't it be better to own up to this kind of thing and spend money trying to fix the problem you created.
The only survivors in this story are the mistreated ex-workers and the people who lost their loved ones.

Planet Earth

Here's some Planet Earth Shallow seas just incase you want to check it out