We Can Do It (TOW #3)

   J Howard Miller created the iconic “We Can Do It” poster, also called Rosie The Riveter, in 1943. Before the creation of the poster Miller was not a notable artist. He studies at the art institute and Pittsburgh and was hired by Westinghouse Electric to create a poster to boost the morale of women workers during World War II. The poster was not seen by the public very much during the 40s but resurfaced later in the 80s during the second wave of feminism. An interesting thing to consider is the idea of how the author establishes ethos. The author, a male artist, has nothing in common with woman working an industrial job. However, the author never makes themselves known instead they take the role of Geraldine Hoff Doyle, a factory worker who modeled for the poster. The poster depicts Geraldine saying “we can do it.” This helps to establish an ethos to the reader.

            The purpose of this poster is easily evident. It is meant as both a boost of morale to women workers as well as a call for women who aren’t working to start.  The woman in the poster Is rolling back her sleeves and flexing. This is meant as an appeal to women’s sense of pride and feminism. Another important part of the image is the text “We can do it”. This text serves as reassurance and morale boost to women workers, but it also seems to imply a sort of subtext. If they can do it, we can do it. This is a sort of call to women who aren’t working in factories already. Rather than appealing to their patriotism it applies again to a sense of pride. The girl in the picture is portrayed as both strong and attractive and this is supposed to also appeal to women because it appeals to a kind of bandwagoning.

            These effective tools are why, when resurfaced the picture became so famous and is not the feminist icon it is today

The Power Of Nothing (TOW #2)

Michael Specter is a staff columnist for the New Yorker whose research focuses primarily in the fields of science and technology. He has written for many other publications such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. He is also the author of Denialism, a book about irrational thinking in science. He cites many notable names such as Ted Kaptchuk, one of the foremost experts on the placebo effect and a Harvard professor as well as many other studies.

The Power Of Nothing is an essay about the power of the placebo effect. The essay looks at the placebo from many different lights and takes into consideration the views of many important people as well as the outcomes of many critical experiments. Specter introduces Ted Kaptchuk, who remains a key focus throughout his essay. Kaptchuk is one of very few Harvard medical professors without an MD or PHD. He is an acupuncturist. He introduces the essay with an anecdote for Kaptchuk about a woman who came to be treated with acupuncture and found it was the miracle cure to the pain she had in her ovaries and was going to undergo intense surgery for. Kaptchuk then shares with Specter that there was no way his acupuncture had physically done something to relieve the pain and introduces the essays topic. The Placebo.

Specter continues to describe both the history of the Placebo as well as its many applications and definitions. He explains that placebos originated to disprove a french mystic who won the interest of Marie Antoinette, and that they are crucial to medicine, they have been historically used as a sort of last ditch resort. He also describes their application in modern days as a testing for different medications. It is as this point where he begins to site many studies and their often conflicting findings in the effectiveness of placebos in application as a drug. Many argue that placebos could be used to actually treat patients while others argue that placebos are infact powerless and rather an accumulation of other significant factors. In the end, however specter presents an argument that guides the reader to a more pro-placebo mindset.

Specter then reveals his true purpose. A call to action for a change in the current medical system. He shows a culminating among many researches that the current medical process can be improved and ends his essay citing his own experience, in which he visited his own doctor and his reassurance was enough to make him feel better, in his opinion, an indisputable placebo effect,

Now We Are Five (TOW #1)

David Sedaris is an american writer notable for his dry and self-deprecating humor. His notable works include a variety of radio contributions for National Public Radio, as well as many books, including 5 New York Times best sellers. This dry and comic tone is present in the way Sedaris recalls his sister's death.

Sedaris Writes his essay Now We Are Five on his experience of losing his experience of losing his younger sister Tiffany. The essay is directed toward both those familiar and unfamiliar with losing loved ones. This is displayed through his vivid description of the family's dynamics and how they are affected by the death. However it is reasonable that the essay may be directed more towards those already familiar because he does not take a great deal of time to explicitly describe how he and his family members felt.

The essay which is written in the time after his sister's death provides a small bit of information about Sedaris’s sister and their childhood. He shares that his sister was a troubled child and sent to a reform school, and since that point she was not very close with her family. At the point of her death Sedaris had not spoken to her in eight years. This information however, only makes up a small amount of the essay. The majority of the essay details a family trip to the beach, and rather than fixating largely on the way he felt after his sister's death Sedaris details the interactions between the members of his family. Because of this his sister’s death is mention far less than one would expected; his sister's death is hardly mentioned for the whole latter half of the essay. However Sedaris does recall his family members sharing stories. Sedaris himself seems to fixate on the idea that his whole identity has been changed. He was no longer one of six siblings, now he was one of five.

The combinations of Sedaris’s thoughts, the fact that he does not linger on about his sister's death, as well as his his matter of fact and almost demeaning description of his sister can make him seem cold however this is not correct. Sedaris essay is a very accurate representation of a family after the loss of a loved one. He perfectly captures the numb and distant mentality of his family and portrays the deaths effects masterfully. He also shows the way that a loved one's death can act as a catalyst that causes one to realize things about themselves.

This image is similar to the dry tone that Sedaris uses to tackle a topic like death.

IRB 1 Intro

For my first Independent reading book I will be reading Into The Wild by John Krakauer. I am looking forward to reading this book a lot. I am familiar with the story of Christopher McCandless; however, I have never read the book. I typically read fiction books, so I hope this story will help to serve as a smooth transition into non-fiction reading.