Unit #1
May 21-27
Read “To the Student” pp xxvii—xxix
Read Ch 1 Prewriting pp 3-23

Click on the following link to read one of my favorite short stories, "She Fell Among Thieves" to show "Essays do not have to be written on lofty intellectual or poetic subjects--in fact, some of the world's best essays have been written on such subjects as china teacups, roast pig, and chimney sweeps".




Assignment 1.1:  After reading the story, write me a paragraph about why you liked, or didn't like the story.  I am not expecting you to put this into any particular form, just free write to give me a little bit of an idea of what your writing looks like at the beginning of the course.
To get full credit for this assignment, I would like 7-10 full sentences  
(40 minutes)

Submit Assignment 1.1 (5 pts) due May 22


Assignment 1.2:  Make a list of 12 topics you might be interested in writing a one page paper about.  After coming up with a list, choose 2 and make a detailed list of things you might cover for each one.  For example, if I picked a topic on "backpacking in Alaska" I might make a detailed list like:  gear, safety, survival skills, bear encounters, how to stay dry, where to camp, weather, reading a compass, etc.  Then do the same for the 2nd topic.  

So, what I want?  A list of 12 topics, then the 2 you picked from the 12 with a list of details you might include in a paper.  Note:  When you make the detailed list of the 2 you picked from the initial 12, make a numbered list and share about 6-10 things in each list.  For example, it should look like this:

First topic:  
Raising children as a single parent
  1.  being both mom and dad
  2.  busyness of a schedule
  3.  trying to make ends meet with one income
  4.  lonliness
  5.  etc., etc.
(30 minutes)

Submit Assignment 1.2 (5 pts) due May 23

Assignment 1.3:  “Practicing what you’ve learned” Part "A" on page 19. Follow these instructions for the assignment rather than the book's instructions:  ALL of the subjects are too broad for what we are doing in this course.  Rewrite all of the sentences with a narrowed down version of the sentence.  For instance, let's say one of the really broad topics listed was "pollution", you could narrow the topic down to something more specific like: "water pollution's affect on African Sparrows"  (40 minutes)

Submit Assignment 1.3 (10 pts)
due May 24


Assignment 1.4:
Read Ch 2 The Thesis Statement pp 31-40
Especially pay attention to the section called "What is a thesis?" on pp 31-32
As you are reading, I would like you to take notes over this portion.  In your notes, highlight the topic headings, then write for me notes for the topic.  For example, on page 31 your first topic heading is:

What is a thesis?  What does a "working thesis" do?
Now take notes over this section.  

Do the same for each section on pp 33-40 and send as an email. (2 hours)

These notes should be at least 1 full page

Submit Assignment 1.4 (20 points)
due May 25


Assignment 1.5:  

The topic of your first paper is:  “A Time I Was Scared”.  We will be using this topic as we begin writing the “Five Paragraph Paper”.  We will be taking “baby steps” for this first one, then cruise pretty quick through several others.

Watch the following YouTube video on how to write a thesis statement.  It is concise and to the point (also, the guy talking is not me...I'm pretty goofy looking, but not that bad)







“Practicing what you’ve learned” on p. 41.  Look at ‘part B’.  Follow the instructions.  Put time into this, don't just write a few words to support your answer.  Very Important:  not only do I want you to rewrite the sentences, but I want you to tell me WHY they need to be rewritten...look back on pp 33-40 (1 hour with the video time)

Submit Assignment 1.5 (20 points) due May 26


Assignment 1.6:  “Assignment” on p. 42.  Follow the instructions.
Remember, when you write a thesis statement use ideas presented in the video:
Topic:
Opinion:
Thesis:

So, for each subject you choose, give me the topic, the opinion of the topic you want to take, then give me the completed thesis statement. (45 minutes)
For example, for the third one "family", you might write 

Topic:  Family
Opinion: have influence on your life
Thesis:  "Of all the relationships folks have during their lives, family members have the most influence on who one becomes in the future."


Click the following button to get a list of thesis revising ideas:


Submit Assignments 1.6  (20 points) due May 26

Assignment 1.7
Read Ch 2 "Using The Essay Map" pp 42-43
In this course, I would like you to write the thesis statement and follow the thesis statement with the essay map.  The essay map is a complete sentence that must tell me three points that support your thesis statement.  

For example, if your thesis statement is, "More people should consider building their own log cabin home."  Your essay map might include points like: sound construction, lower costs, and personalized design.
Do you see how the essay map tells me three reasons why building a log cabin home is a good idea?

The next thing you do, is take the three points (essay map points) and put them in sentence form.  For example, in the explanation above, we had as our three points:  sound construction, lower costs, and personalized design.

If we were to write ONE sentence using these three points, it might say, "This gives the homeowner the opportunity to make sure the construction is sound, the cost is kept low, and it offers one to personalize their design".  This sentence is the essay map.

ALL papers in this class will have a thesis followed by an essay map.  Two sentences....one for the thesis and one for the essay map.

Take each of the thesis statements you wrote in Assignment 1.6, type them out, and follow them up with an essay map for each.  Remember, your essay map must tell me the direction you will be going with the thesis statement by giving me three points to support your topic.  AND...the essay map MUST be a complete sentence containing your three points.

So, go ahead and take your five thesis statements from Assignment 1.6 and write five essay maps.  What you need to turn in:  your thesis statements from assignment 1.6, followed by your essay map. You must have only two sentences for each of the 5 (thesis and essay map)  (1 hour)

Submit Assignment 1.7 (40 pts) due May 27


Assignment 1.8:  Using the topic “A time when I was scared”, think of a time when you were young, or maybe last week when you had the “bejeebers” scared out of you.  It could be a time when you were lost, in a storm on the ocean, when your child was lost, etc.  You are going to write an essay on this topic later so first of all I want you to develop a thesis statement following the guidelines from the reading—especially pp 33-36 (the advice highlighted in purple beginning with “a good thesis…”).  After you have done that, I want you to review pp 40-41 on “Using the Essay Map” and come up with an essay map to go along with your thesis.  Look especially at the first paragraph on p. 40 for a good definition of the essay map.  I want the essay map (always a complete sentence) to include 3 main points you will discuss in the paper you will write on being scared.

So, to sum it all up:  Assignment 1.8.  Write a thesis statement and an essay map on the topic of being scared.  The essay map is a sentence that follows the thesis statement that tells the reader the 3 points you will discuss in the paper. (to do a good job, this should take about 30 minutes)



Submit Assignment 1.8 (10 pts) due May 27




She Fell Among Thieves
~Robert Edmond Alter

Our six diggers were spading back the hard, cindery earth crusted over a formation of flat stones.  I was sitting on a wall just above them, supervising the job.  Tanner, my partner, was in his tent suffering from intermittent malaria.
Twilight was flowing over the Jordanian hills, and the first fat drops of rain were just beginning to splat on the bone-dry dirt.  The headman, Hassin, straightened up and grinned at me.  They had uncovered a stone floor or roof, a rectangle of, say, 20 by 15 feet.  I hunkered down for a closer inspection.
It was a roof, all right, laid by long-ago artisans to endure centuries of dust-submerged oblivion.  
“Good,” I said to Hassin.  “Remove one of the cornerstones.”
The Arabs pried up one of the fair-sized slabs.  A rectangle of black, hollow space appeared.  
“Bring the ladder and a flashlight,” I said.  “You and the men stay up here.  Understand?  Give them cigarettes.”
The place itself was not truly clammy.  It was the cold, dark air that gave the suggestion.  I started to shiver.  I played the flashlight over the old, stone walls, seeing a faint filigree of mold.
The figure of a white female stood in the halo of light.  It took me so by surprise that I almost blurted, “Excuse me.”  Then I had to laugh at myself.  It was only a life-size marble statue.  It glowed, pale, cold and glorious, like moonlight.
It was the most remarkable statue I had ever seen.  The detail was astounding.  Her hair, eyelashes, fingernails, everything.  She stood with her legs slightly apart, her torso turning at the hips, her head looking back over one shoulder.  The expression on her face held me—was it surprise, horror or ecstasy?  At what strange sight was she staring?  Who had been the sculptor?  How had the statue come here?  How long ago?
Excitement beat in my ears, and slushed around in my brain like warm, heady wine.  I was certain that I had made an exceedingly valuable discovery.  I went up the ladder, dismissed the work crew and hurried over to Tanner’s tent.
“You’ve never dreamed of a statue like the,”  I told Tanner.  “She—she’s beautiful!”
Tanner grunted and threw a pill into his mouth.  He was a squat, powerful man.  The Mexican government was down on him for smuggling artifacts out of Yucatan; he had been run out of Cambodia for the same business.  There wasn’t a reputable archeological group in the world that would touch him with a ten foot pole.  I was new in the game; I didn’t especially like the man, but I admired his professional knowledge.  It seemed that I could learn about the financial end of archeology—the rewards—from Tanner.
In raincoats, we went out into the rain-lashed night.  Tanner took one look at the white statue and went into a spasm of trembling.  “My gosh, she’s f-fantastic, Miller!  She’s old, old, old.  My boy, you have no idea how old.  She’s not Greek or Roman.  Even their greatest sculptors couldn’t capture a facial expression like that.  Y-you can practically see the pores in her skin!”
Her face had me again—that enigmatic backward look.  What had she seen?  I pulled my eyes away.
“The sculptor must have used a Jewess for his model,” Tanner said,  “She probably dates back to the Old Testament.  Do you have any idea what she’s worth?”  His fever-bright eyes were greedy.  
I shook my head, staring at him.  
“She’s worth the 30 years I’ve spent grubbing in this business.  This is the treasure hunter’s dream.  There’s thousands in her, Miller.  I know the right people.  No questions asked.  Right down the middle, boy.  Fifty-fifty.  If—“
“If I help you smuggle her out of the country,” I said.
He laughed, his eyes leaping from my face to hers.
“There’s no other way.  You know there isn’t.  do Hassin and the boys know about her?”
“I don’t think so.  I came down here by myself.  But Hassin might have peeked when my back was turned.”  
Tanner nodded, shivering.  “If he knows, he’ll run right to the authorities.  Miller, we’re getting her out of here tonight.  We’ll take the truck and follow the shore of the Dead Sea down to Israel.  There are crossroads through the barbed wire.”
We had to rig up the block and tackle to get her out of the pit.  She was heavy, but not as heavy as I thought marble would be.  “What do you think she is?”  I asked.  “Did you notice how she seems to sparkle in the light?”
“Could—could be just the moisture,” Tanner grunted, “After eons of dampness down in that cellar.”  Maybe.  But the cellar had seemed as hermetically sealed as King Tut’s tomb.
Our vehicle was an archaic old wreck, with tall, metal sides around the bed and an open top.  Grunting, heaving and shoving, we jockeyed the gleaming, woman-size statue into the truck bed.  “I’ll d-drive,” Tanner said, and he gave me a shove into the cab.
Outside, it rained.  Inside, it dribbled, the moisture seeping around the door frames and the seams of the windshield.  The truck skidded, swerved, slewed around, the tires treading for the ground.  It all seemed crazy to me—this pell-mell race into the night, down a muddy, nameless road, in a blinding rain, the fever-ridden obsessed man clutching the swerving wheel at my side.  A crystalline white eye materialized ahead of us, far down the road.
“That’s a motorcycle,” I said.  “Someone’s signaling us to stop.”
Then I realized that Tanner meant to drive right over the man and his cycle.  I slashed at his brake foot with my left boot.  “You fool!  You can’t kill him!”
The truck went into a mad skid, the rear end skittering halfway around in a muddy pivot.  A rain-coated Arab picked his way toward us, slipping in the muck.  He was one of the shore patrolmen, and he carried an old World War II sub-machine gun.  I was in a panic to get out and meet him at the back of the truck.  He probably could be bribed.
“Open up,” the Arab ordered.
The truck bed must have been like a bathtub.  Rainwater was pouring out of every crack and hole.  I put my hand on the right-hand bolt and smiled at him.  “Look here,” I started to say.
Tanner’s silhouette appeared behind the Arab, and I saw his right arm swing up.  A wrench bounced off the man’s head, and the machine gun roared straight in the air as he dropped into the mud.
“Tanner!  You crazy idiot!  We could have bribed him!”
Tanner yanked the gun free of the Arab.  Then he said, “Drag him into the shrub.  Hurry!”
“Tanner, he’s badly hurt or dead.  We can’t leave him out here in…”
The muzzle of the submachine gun tapped me coldly, jarringly, under the chin.  When I looked up, Tanner was aiming at my chest.
“Get him into the bush; then drive.”  Tanner said.  And there were no ifs about it, either—not with that gun aimed at me.
I was scared—sick-stomach scared.  The sound of that gun was still ringing in my ears.  Those slugs would plow through me like darning needles through warm butter.  I hid the body and drove.
The rain never let up.  It seemed to cover the night land as Noah’s deluge had once done.
Tanner figured we were far enough south to get through the barbed-wire barricades that separated Jordan and Israel, and he said, “Take the first turnoff west.”  But the road ran us smack into a frontier outpost.  An officer came through the door.  Tanner swung up the submachine gun.  I grabbed at the barrel in a panic.
“Don’t!  There’s a whole guardhouse of them.  They’ll cut us to shreds.”
Tanner relaxed with a soul-weary sigh.  “I had it,” he muttered.  “I had the answer for at least one man’s purpose of existence in this stupid world.  And now…”
The officer, followed by a sentry who carried an old Lebel rifle, came up on my side.
“Where do you think you’re going?” the lieutenant asked.
“We’re American archeologists.  We want to cross to Beersheba.”
“What are you carrying into Israel?”
“Nothing.”
He turned slightly.  “Keep your rifle at his head while I check the truck,” he told the sentry.
I stared blankly at the rifle while my world turned slowly upside down.  It wasn’t just the trouble we would be in for trying to smuggle the statue out of the country; it might also be murder, which could mean a firing squad.
I turned and looked at Tanner.  He was trembling.  “She’s mine,” he said hoarsely.  “They can’t take her.  I’d rather die than give her up!”
The Arab lieutenant came slogging back.  “All right,” he said.  “You may pass.”
I stared.  Then I said, “Thank you.”
I pressed the gas, and we rumbled into the waiting blackness of no man’s land.  I didn’t get it.  Surely the Arab officer had looked into the truck bed.  So why hadn’t he seen the statue?  Why hadn’t he arrested us as smugglers?
Suddenly we were at the Israeli barricade and soldiers came out to meet us.  I stopped the truck, and a Jewish lieutenant stepped up to the cab window.  “We’ll have to check your truck,” he said.
Tanner was already out his door.  I shot out mine.  Tanner and I unbolted the tailgate and let it drop.  We stared into the rain-whipped truck bed.  Water poured out of it like a miniature Niagara Falls.
That’s all there was—draining water.  Nothing else.
“Stolen!”  Tanner screamed.  “They stole her!”
“No!” I grabbed at his arm.  “They didn’t have a chance.  We would have heard the tailgate.  The Arab lieutenant was back there for only a few seconds.  He couldn’t have gotten her out by himself.  She weighs too much.”
“Then where?”  Tanner wailed.  “Where’s she gone to?  Oh my gosh, she’s dissolved!  The rain!  The filthy rain!”
He turned away from the open truck bed, and he started to laugh the high-mounting, rocking laugh of insanity.  He sat right down in the mud and roared with laughter until his breath failed him; then he went into hiccupping, giggling sobs.  
The lieutenant and I left Tanner with a medic.  We went outside to have a smoke.  The rain had dwindled to a sullen mist.  I had nothing to say.  I had only one question.  Where had she gone?
The medic came out and accepted a cigarette from the lieutenant. 
“I gave him a shot to calm him down,” he told us.  Then he looked at me and jerked his thumb back at the infirmary shack.  “Religious fanatic, eh?” he said.
“Who?  Tanner?  No. Why?”
“Because he keeps raving about Lot’s wife,” the medic said.  “About how she looked back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah even though God had warned her not to.  And so she was turned into a pillar of salt.”