In my Rowan Announcer, I received a "Rowan in the News" announcement about an alumna student who came to Rowan to give future writers advice. Here is a quote of what Kristen Brozina said:

"What I would say is, regardless of talent, it's just kind of luck when it happens. And my advice is to stay in really close contact with everyone you meet and develop real relationships with them. Take every opportunity to get to know people and stay in contact with them, and think of every piece you do as a sample of your writing. Definitely take every opportunity to show your stuff and try to impress the people around you."

You can find the whole article here.

I just recently found out that my mom's Aunt Brenda was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. She is 72 years old. My grandmother--my mom's mom, and Aunt Brenda's sister--passed away from cancer when I was young. The first thing that came to my mind to tell my mother when I found out her condition, was, "We have to tell her about juicing organic foods." I strongly believe that raw organic vegetables play a large role in the treatment and prevention of cancer; I am more passionately rooted in this belief because I feel my mom was cured from cancer by juicing organic fruits and veggies, in addition to radiation therapy and the consumption of supplements. I've also conducted research on the subject for my Writing, Research, and Technology class at Rowan University.

This recent news has really hit me hard, and I feel for my mother, who has already been through so much. I will keep updating my posts with news of her condition.

For those following my posts about the collaborative research project:

During my mom's sickness (she had Hodgkin's Lymphoma), she followed a diet called the "Hallelujah diet" that Rev. George Malkmus designed. I discuss his credentials here. He was diagnosed with colon cancer; his mother was also diagnosed with this disease, and she passed away after using conventional/medical methods of healing, such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy. He decided to try a holistic method of healing: he juiced raw organic vegetables and stayed away from sugar, flour, and processed foods. My mother followed this diet, and a breakdown of the diet is listed below:


The 85% Raw Portion This portion of The Hallelujah Diet is composed exclusively of the garden foods God instructs man to eat (Genesis 1:29). The dense living nutrients found in raw foods and their juices produce abundant energy and vibrant health while satisfying our cells’ nutritional needs, controlling hunger efficiently.

• Beverages: Freshly extracted vegetable juices, BarleyMax, CarrotJuiceMax, BeetMax, and remineralized distilled water
• Dairy Alternatives: Fresh almond milk, creamy banana milk, as well as frozen banana, strawberry, or blueberry “fruit creams”
• Fruit: All fresh, as well as unsulphured organic dried fruit (limit fruit to no more than 15% of daily food intake)
• Grains: Soaked oats, raw muesli, dehydrated granola, dehydrated crackers
• Beans: Green beans, peas, sprouted garbanzos, sprouted lentils, and sprouted mung beans
• Nuts & Seeds: Raw almonds, sunflower seeds, macadamia nuts, walnuts, raw almond butter or tahini (consume sparingly)
• Oils and Fats: Extra virgin olive oil, Udo’s Oil, flaxseed oil (the oil of choice for people with cancer, except men with prostate cancer, who may be better served meeting the essential fat needs through freshly ground flaxseed), and avocados
• Seasonings: Fresh or dehydrated herbs, garlic, sweet onions, parsley, and salt-free seasonings
• Sweets: Fruit smoothies, raw fruit pies with nut/date crusts, date-nut squares, etc.
• Vegetables: All raw vegetables
• Soups: Raw soups

The 15% Cooked Portion Cooked foods follow the raw salad at lunch or evening meals and can prove beneficial for those trying to maintain body weight.

• Beverages: Caffeine-free herb teas and cereal-based coffee alternatives, along with bottled organic juices
• Beans: Lima, adzuki, black, kidney, navy, pinto, red, and white
• Dairy: Non-dairy cheese, almond milk and rice milk (use sparingly)
• Fruit: Cooked and unsweetened frozen fruits
• Grains: Whole-grain cereals, breads, muffins, pasta, brown rice, millet, etc.
• Oils: Vegan mayonnaise made from cold-pressed oils
• Seasonings: Same as the 85% portion, plus unrefined sea salt (use sparingly)
• Soups: Soups made from scratch without fat, dairy, or refined table salt
• Sweeteners: Raw, unfiltered honey, rice syrup, unsulphured molasses, stevia, carob, pure maple syrup, date sugar, agave nectar (use very sparingly)
• Vegetables: Steamed or wok-cooked fresh or frozen vegetables, baked white, yellow or sweet potatoes, squash, etc.

This link shows the scientific research and validation found for the "Hallelujah Diet."

My group and I are working on a collaborative research project in which we discuss/explore the affordances and constraints of organic and non-organic foods. We interviewed my mom, Sharon Winter, on her opinion regarding organic food, because this is what she used to help heal herself when she had Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Kat produced an edited video of the interview, but she wasn't able to fuse certain songs into it. These are some of the songs that my mom said described her emotions when she had cancer.

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Ideas to consider when writing the reflective letter...

Writing: impacted your notions of writing

• genres
• modes
• collaboration
• blog
• website writing
• revision

^My application of these ideas. Ground my talk in what I did. What was difficult about my twitterive? what did I actually do in the class?

Research: impacted your notions of research

• place (twitter & technologies)
• field research
• semi-structured interviews
• reflective vs. reflexive
• oral histories
  
• narrative inquiries
• qualitative vs. quantitative
• Text =readings, Food Inc, and tweets counting as research

Technology: impacted your notions and literacies in relation to technology

• weebly
• twitter (discourse)
• blog
• digital recorders
• youtube
• files (compressing/converting)
  

When I was younger, a “healthy” place I remember visiting was my Aunt Pat’s. She wasn’t really my aunt: she was my mom’s best friend, and we all called her Aunt Pat. I remember dreading going to her house because they never had anything to drink—unless you counted unsweetened tea, Noni Juice, and water, which I didn’t. Her daughter Leah and I were best friends, even though she was two years younger than me. She would sneak me in her room and show me 16 ounce soda bottles. “I watered these down to preserve them,” she would say. They tasted horrible, but they were better than Noni juice. Aunt Pat, however, was the woman who helped to save my mother’s life.

As mentioned in the raw footage of Sharon Winter’s interview, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, or cancer of the lymph nodes and white blood cells (which are a part of the immune system). A more in depth explanation of the cancer can be found here. My mom said that she could remember giving me a bath and throwing up in the toilet simultaneously. She was diagnosed with cancer the day after she had her son, but she did have the cancer while she was carrying my brother, David. (We are five years apart.) The doctors credit not being able to find her cancer sooner because her pregnancy symptoms masked the cancer symptoms—swelling in the lymph nodes, leg swelling, night sweats, and shortness of breath, among other things. When David was born, she fell extremely ill. She developed a high fever and was taken for an x-ray, because they thought she either had pneumonia or a collapsed lung because she was on 100% oxygen during the surgery. (She delivered David via C-section.) The X-ray showed that she had a growth, but a CT scan was required in order to determine the exact size and accurateness. From there, once she was discharged from the hospital, she had to schedule to meet with a surgeon to perform a thoracotomy to remove the tumor. The tumor was the size of a grapefruit and located next to her heart.   

My mom mentions that she didn’t really get into buying organic and all natural foods until after she already had two surgeries—one to remove her spleen and part of her liver to do a biopsy. It was sometime after recovering from these surgeries, and the period between radiation, when she was told she needed to regain her strength that she started purchasing organic foods.  She bought 25 pounds of carrots at a time per week, because she drank three or four glasses a day mixed with kyo green. She cut out sugar, processed foods, soda, and coffee. She used honey as a sweetener. She made her own bread, and she only brought organic and all natural foods into the house. I don’t remember any of this. However, my mom says that I used to tell her that my friends thought her food was weird. Everything looked different: the bread machines at that time only made round loafs, the ketchup was a different consistency, you had to stir the peanut butter because the oil rose to the top, and my friends didn’t like the hot dogs because they were tofu. Basically, no one ever wanted to eat over, she says.

Because I know that organic and natural foods helped to save my mother’s life—along with traditional methods and supplements—I am very pro-organic. Since my mom has been clear of her cancer, we haven’t brought much organic food home. She says that we stopped purchasing organic because it was so hard to find, it was more expensive, and the place we had to travel (a co-op) was far away. Now, though, we have been trying to purchase more organic. My mom says that she buys organic apples and whatever produce she can when it is fresh at the food store. I know that I definitely will start eating more all natural and organic foods, because I want to be the healthiest I can be. I know that cancer runs in the family, and I want to feed my body right to avoid this disease.   

My mom has been considered "cured" for 12 years, or 5 years after her last test came back normal in 1994. She has had no further "positive" CT scans. I don't know what I would have done without her.

More and more, I have noticed that my family and friends are changing their diets. Recently, my brother became a vegetarian, so he only eats meat-substitutes. His switch was weird, because my mom has always cooked dinners consisting of a meat, vegetables, and a starch. Also, he has a friend who moved in with us who is a vegetarian as well.

Then, my sister--who is 13--has friends in middle school who do not eat meat. I assume that this is their parent's doing, because I presume that middle schooler's wouldn't make the conscious choice not to eat meat. This is just my assumption, because I know that when I was in middle and high school, I never even thought about it. All my friends ate meat. However, times are changing, and as information floods the media, people are becoming more armed with knowledge.

Lastly, my boyfriend told me that he wanted to stop eating meat. He is a huge animal lover, and he watched a lot of PETA videos that showed the animals being tortured, abused, and killed inhumanely. This reminded me of Food, Inc, specifically the way the chickens were treated. (The PURDUE farmers who kicked the chickens; the chemicals that are injected into the chickens so that they grow faster, and etc.) I have to admit, when he said he wasn't going to eat meat, I was upset. As mentioned previously, my mother has always cooked healthy meals consisting of meat, so what would become of her recipes? How could I provide meals for him? (OK, that is a tad sexist, but I want to cook for my man!) However, I know that I need to respect his decision and find other healthy alternatives to cooking.

Further, everything that I have learned has made me want to change my eating habits. Through the readings, Food Inc., and the research conducted for my collaborative research project, I know that I want to change my lifestyle. For example, I will start eating organic and natural foods, instead of processed foods that use high fructose corn syrup and corn oil. Recently, I went to the food store with my mom, and we were in the peanut butter and jelly aisle. Looking on the back of the peanut butter jars, we saw ingredients like these ones from Jiff:

Then, we picked up a jar of "all natural" peanut butter, and we saw words like: peanuts, sugar, salt and molasses--things that are real. Things that can be pronounced.

Taking from Micheal Pollan's, The Omnivore's Dilemma: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

Pre-discussion, and based on what I remember from the reading--Collaborative Writing in Composition Studies-- this is how I would define these terms:

1. Collaborative--Working together on a piece with someone. Both the writers would look at their writing styles to determine their strengths and weaknesses, and then look to the other to fill that void. This would also be vice-versa.

2. Cooperative--Two or more people working together, and being able to comprehend each others strengths and weaknesses.

3. Co-author--I would say this means that two people work on a project without really meshing their ideas. Rather, they both talk on the same subject but use their own style.


What they really mean, or how they should be defined, isn't linear. There are multiple definitions for these terms. As discussed in class, I have come to these conclusions and modified my schema on these words:

1. Collaborative--Being able to work together so that each member of the group can contribute information. This information should be viewed reflexively, as discussed in class, to make the piece stronger. (One collective voice?)

2. Cooperative--Working together without the meshing of ideas. Teachers use this  a lot in their classrooms when they think they are allowing for collaborative group work.

3. Co-author--I am still fuzzy on this term. For this, all I am certain of is that there is more than one author on a piece.

I am working on a collaborative research project with Kat, Olivia, and Casey from my WRT class. We had come up with many questions, but we narrowed ours down to the broad topic of organic vs. inorganic foods. To make this narrow, we decided to focus on:


1) Is there any way to truly know if the food you are eating is organic, and what causes certain foods to slip through the cracks?

2) The price of organic food vs. inorganic food. Is organic food really that much more expensive?

3) Interviewing a non-organic farmer and a woman (my mom, Sharon Winter) who believes that through traditional methods, supplements, and organic foods that she was cured of her cancer. (She had Hodgkins Lymphoma, cancer of the white blood cells and the lymph nodes.)

I think we may need to make our topic even narrower, so any suggestions and feedback that you have is greatly appreciated.

Reading this article made me a little mad. It reminded me of an essay I wrote when I attended Camden County College. It was for Comp 1 and about gay rights. I’m a straight A student, so when this essay came back with a big fat B on it, my heart dropped into my stomach. Maybe this professor, I believed, was just too old and conservative to see things from a democratic standpoint. But there is a difference between writing a persuasive essay and shoving your view down someone else’s throat.

In my essay, there was a line I wrote that went something along the lines of, “It’s a wonder gay people have any rights,” or, “I’m surprised gays have any rights at all.” I don’t have the back-up file, so I can’t know for sure. But my professor had underlined this line many times. There are many lines from this article that I can bring to your attention that come off as abrasive and one-sided.

1.       “That they do not yet offer to insert it, prechewed, into our mouth is only because they have found no profitable way to do so.”

2.       “And the business of the cosmeticians of advertising is to persuade the consumer that food so produced is good, tasty, healthful, and a guarantee of marital fidelity and long life.”

3.       “The industrial farm is said to have been patterned on the factory production line. In practice, it looks more like a concentration camp.”

To make yourself credible, you are supposed to carefully weigh/examine both sides of a story. And these are just a few lines. Sound abrasive? Read the whole article, The Pleasures of Eating, here. I’m sure any World War II Jewish victim can tell you that being overcrowded in a field of cabbage is not as torturous as the agony he or she received in a concentration camp.

Ok, I’m getting a little bitter, but you get my drift. It’s not that I disagree with this article. I think it’s important to learn the seven steps of what one can do to eat responsibly. I just disagree with the way Wendell Berry wrote the article. Calling the American people lazy and passive isn’t the best way to get them to take action.