letter to the editor

I am writing a letter to the editor about an article that talks about the new bill introduced to the Texas Government to let Liquor stores be open on Sundays. For quite a few years now liquor stores could not be open on Sundays or past 9 pm at night on any day. Texas is considered part of the Bible belt and this is where the law originally stems from. Letting liquor stores be open on Sunday's would be very controversial because in many ways Texans still have an old fashioned feel to the ways of the past. Tradition is highly coveted in Texas and letting liquor stores be open on Sundays would ruin many traditions and "degrade the Holy day." Whether or not this actually happens is up to the Texan Government.

Unit 2 Prewriting

What connects my sources?

- General Motors is the key component in all my sources. Since it is what I am researching It is what all my sources are about. General Motor’s financial situation is another idea that connects all the sources together. They all talk a bit differently about GM’s finances but almost all the articles are about how GM got into their present situation or how they are going to get out.

Summary (from above)

- The controlling idea of my essay is General Motor’s financial situation, more specifically how they managed to get into such a bad financial crises and how they are going to get out of it.

Order of sources I already have

- I believe my first source should be one that deals with how General Motor’s got themselves into their infamous financial situation.
- Secondly I’d like to use a source that ties the past years that GM hasn’t been doing things right into the time period right before the economy went downhill and GM used up all their funds.
- Third I would like to use a article about the present day situation that GM is in. Probably news from current Wall Street, USA today, etc.
- Fourth, If I can find one, I’d like an article about the future outlook of General Motors. About how they are changing and what the government decides to do about bailing them out for the second time.

How I am going to do this organization, justify my organization.

- The reason I have chosen to organize my paper like this is because I believe it portrays the best example of how GM got into their present day jam. I chose to do it chronologically because it is easiest to follow that way. It will start from the beginning stages and then follow the actual stages that GM took over the past years and more importantly months of crises. I will explain how they got into the jam they are in, I will explain what they are doing to get out of it and then I will describe peoples opinion’s about the future outlook of General Motors.

Go through and figure out how I am going to transition from source to source.

- I think my transitions are pretty simple since the paper is going to be in chronological order. Between the sources I should be leading up to the new information throughout my paragraphs anyways since I will be following the natural course of time. Although, I may try and tie in outside information in the transitions so it flows better and people understand the context that the auto financial crises is involved in. Since the whole world is in a bigger financial crises, and the auto sector is a small part of that I think it is important that people understand that. I will add some of that outside info into my sources because it will help tie in all the stats presented throughout the paper.

Prewriting for Primary Source Workshop

My biggest concern about the research I have already done is whether or not it is the right research. I still don't completely understand what we are writing about so I haven't been to sure what I should be researching and for what. Another concern is that my topic is still rather broad. It seems like in class we have talked about how we all need to narrow down our topic and I am not sure how to narrow mine down any further to where it will still be interesting. I feel as though to narrow of a topic gets rather dull and boring. Not only is a narrow topic boring it is hard to write about. A lot of my topic is based upon other outside information so I cannot exclude that all together.

Source 1

• My first source I believe that my first source, which is a news article I found on the library database, is a good candidate for a primary source.
• I chose it because it seemed like a credible source, and it pertained to what I am doing my research over. It directly address my topic in that it is about how GM had to empty all their emergency funds.
• As stated above, the source is about how GM had to empty all their funds to stay in business.
• I noticed that this particular source was all logos, straight facts

Source 2

• This source I got out of the money section of the Wall Street Journal. That in it self should be enough for it to qualify as a good primary source
• I chose it once again because it pertained to my topic but it also had a lot of good information about the current auto crises.
• This source is about how GM and other US auto makers are going to cut costs to try and bail themselves out of the current predicament they are in.
• For being a business/money article I noticed more emotion and pathos in this article. Since there were a lot of quotes I think those are what added the more personal approach to the article.

Source 3

• My third source is more personal stories and articles from the General Motors website. These are very primary because they are coming straight from the people being affected by this auto crises.
• I chose this because I think it adds a good perspective on just how important this crises is. These are actual people and companies being affected.
• The source is in general about General Motors and their financial status and how that is affecting other people who work closely with GM.
• There is a lot of pathos associated with this website because some of these people who write these articles could possibly be out of work and whenever peoples lively hood are being threatened to be taken away people get very emotional.

Notes about Space

The public space I am choosing is the Vaquero Country Club.
While there I noticed all sorts of things that can be arguments. I’ll start with the space as a whole. The club house is where I observed. The outside of the building looks quite southwestern and Texan. The building is made of sandstone colored stone and has a greenish, black slate roof. Most all the fixtures on the outside are made of copper. It is a large building, in the neighborhood of 10, 000 square feet. The inside carries on the architecture of the outside. When you walk in through the front double doors you are immersed by a relaxing, log cabinesque interior. The front doors look an awful lot like doors from an old Texan prison. Aged dark wood and rebar. As you walk in straight ahead of you is a wide hallway leading into the bar. As you walk into the bar/great room to your right is a free standing fire place and on the other side of that is the more formal dining room. If you look to the left there is the actual bar and bar stools. If you walk in the front door again and instead of going straight you go to the right you go down a hallway again that leads to a stairwell and double doors. The stairwell goes up to the ladies locker room and the double doors go into the men’s locker room. There is more but I will leave that out for now.

The objects in the club house are mostly golf or antique type things. The pictures are aged golf pictures or aged impressionistic paintings. All very dull black, white and gray pictures. Nothing flashy at all. There is a lot of statues either of copper or bronze. The statues are mostly of golfers or famous Texans. The furniture looks like something you would see in a log cabin if it was in Texas. It is aged and there is a lot of leather and wood. The tile on the floor is a slate looking tile. Once again it is all aged to look like it has been there for a while.

The people in the country club are very different and yet very similar. All of them are very well off, in fact it was just named highest per capita income for a single city in the United States. The people though range from CEO’s of large cooperation’s to Famous Football players and everyone in-between. Most of the people that are at the club are there for a purpose. They are either there to play golf, to eat lunch or dinner or to relax in the spa. I noticed a lot of people simply come there to socialize too, especially around dinner time. Most everyone knows each other so there is a lot of interaction between the people. I also noticed people treat the club house like their home. Most everyone feels very comfortable there and it causes them to relax more than if they were just in a typical space like Wal-Mart or something.

I observed the club once at night and once in the early morning and I was surprised at the different things people did at different times of the day. In the morning people are generally there to work out or to play golf. There is not a lot of wandering around. In the morning I noticed quite a few more women there than men. I’m not sure why though. In the evening most of the people were there for dinner. It seems as though most of the people that came also socialized quite profusely. The dinner customers too were also more polite and personable then the morning people. I accredited this to the people in the morning were still tired and probably were still trying to wake up. While the people at night were ready to go out and have a good time. I know from personal experience I am generally much more fun to be around at night then at 6am in the morning.

Arguments of Fact/Definition

The menu in the restaurant was one of the only arguments of fact that I noticed at Vaquero. It has prices set for the different menu items. The spa sheet was another fact argument I noticed. For example, a one hour Swedish massage is 210 dollars. It is arguing that a one hour Swedish massage with that particular massage therapist is worth 210 dollars.

There is a sign on the wall that says, "Golf Magazine 10 best private country clubs in the southwest." This is a good argument of fact because it is arguing that Vaquero is on of the best country clubs in southwest United States. I agree that it is, but someone else might not making it an argument.

Chapter 1

What I found suprising in chapter one was how it reshaped my view on arguments. Before I thought that an argument was a disagreement that always ended in some sort of fight. Well that is clearly not the case. Like the example of an agrument to inform. Who knew a street sign could be considered an argument? In fact an agrument is just simply discovering a truth, and a street sign definitly helps someone discover a truth.

An agrument to convince also suprised me. When ever I am trying to convince someone of something I am always thinking of the other persons comeback. Yet I never actually thought that I was doing that. Sure enough when ever I am persuading or convincing someone I am thinking of their opinion and shaping my side to counter act what they might have to say. And that is an argument too.

Even though the first chapter was the author trying to convince me that everything was an argument, I still wasn't fully convinced. Sure he made some good points and it opended my eyes to a new view of arguments but there are somethings that were just a little to much of a strech. such as an argument to explore? I mean yes I can see how exploring a subject can have a lot of sides but it just didn't fit into my newly opened definition of an argument. Exploring anything to me would be considered more of research than arguing. When do you see doctors exploring new ways to fight cancer and they are arguing with themselves or someone else about their new research. How funny would that be to see a doctory yelling at a Petrie Dish? "you darn cancer cells stop arguing with me!" haha