Author Archives: NICOLE AVILES-DEVIVO

3.1 Superheros are Roofs, not ON Roofs.

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What do Superman and Batman and other Metropolis based Superheros have in common?  They stand tall and proud to protect our cities atop the our city’s skyscraper’s roofs.  Another rooftop super hero without a cape is a green roof.  Green roofs will protect our cities’ inhabitants better than any superhero.

I will explore the positive effects that green roofs in NYC are having on our great city.  I will focus mostly on the effects green roofs are having on reducing our urban heat island effect.  Large structures like Jacob Javitts and the Barclays center have already jumped on this building solution.   NYC boasts 40,000 acres of rooftop landscape, yet on 60 acres are currently utilizing this effective new roofing material.  Legislature is currently being passed to prohibit the usage of glass materials in roofing projects in attempts to cover the tops of of skyline with green roof and incentivize builders to work with these sustainable materials.

2:4 Essay 2 Reflection

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  • What are you proud of in this draft? What’s working well?

I’m most proud in how I put down a lot of thoughts that worked to my thesis.   I’m also proud that my creative writing skills seem to be still coming through

  • More broadly, what do you think your strengths as a writer are? Why?

I think I have a good command of the English language, verb usage and I write expressively.

  • What are the most important issues to address in revising Essay 2? Why?

To lengthen my thoughts and make more connections that address the “So What”

  • What are your goals for revising? (Share your 2 “radical revision” steps you’ll take, too.)

I’d like to question and deepen the flip side of the thesis for a brief moment.  I’d also like to show more real connections between the essay and media I choose.

2:3 Paragraph Revision

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Paragraph Revision

 

In the Dr. Pepper commercial, the mountain man partakes in very stereotypical manly experiences as he eats tree bark as beef jerky, single handedly carries large tree logs around and fishes in an icy stream alongside a uncharacteristically friendly grizzly bear who is also fishing.   In this icy stream he waits as a bald eagle swoops down satirically to deliver an icy cold Dr. Pepper Ten to him. Dr. Pepper’s Mountain Man has also returned to this frontier where he is free to be wild and carefree like the animals he interacts with.  

 

The Mountain Man in the Dr. Pepper commercial is a stereotypical male figure.  He does stupid things like eating tree bark, carrying heavy trees and fishes with a mean bear.  He then drinks a diet soda that was delivered by a bird. He likes to act like a wild animal.

 

My revision sounds stupid and very unsophisticated.  I would never write this was and I’m a big fan of words, especially descriptive ones.

2.2 The Broken Street Lamp

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Broken Street Lamp DRAFT

 

No people – except photographer

No cars

Fog – cool air

Early morning hours

Store closed or open 

Broken street light

Cool breeze

Buzzing noise from working street lamps

No food left, no humans left to shop, end of life?

But who is taking the pic, who is turning on the lights

Apocalypse, end of humanity

 

Broken Street Lamp REVISION

 

In the wee hours of the morning, before crowds of panicked Brooklyn shoppers arrive, a young supermarket employee snaps a quick picture on his phone of a lonely abandoned shopping cart in the parking lot.  As a amateur photographer, he thinks it’s an artsy picture that he can cleverly caption for his Instagram account with joking hashtag of #COVID19 or #Apocalypse. He is acutely aware he’s alone and actually inhales the dense March fog.  He’s not scared at this moment that he’s inhaling a havoc-wreaking virus. Within one hour he’ll put on a cheap mask and have hundreds of fellow New Yorkers breathing on him as he bags their quarantine groceries. But for now, he’s relaxed, at peace and calm.  His attention turns towards the upwards buzzing of the halogen street lamps. He looks up to the lamps and notices one is broken. He thinks to himself that won’t be fixed anytime soon. Usually he has to report an outage like this to his manager. In that instant, he is snatched out of his calmed state and back to reality.  This scared young employee goes down a deeper darker hole and thinks what if this street lamp never gets fixed, What if in two weeks time no maintenance crew is present to fix it because we are on full lockdown. What if no one ever returns? Will all the streetlights go dark one morning? Is this really the #Apocalypse???

 

Broken Street Lamp REFLECTION

 

This was a little difficult because I took this pic and went towards a creative writing piece.  Not sure if that was the intent of the exercise. Even knowing the title of the picture, it was hard for me in these uncertain times to not relate this picture to our current health pandemic we are facing.  I was happy how this turned out though I’m not sure I hit the mark in terms of the assignment. Very hard to concentrate these days on tasks…

1:3 The California Gold Coast v. Refugee Camps of Bangaladesh

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In “The Uninhabitable Earth” by David Wallace-Wells, Wells explores the idea that “climate change isn’t happening here or there but everywhere and all at once” (5).  He makes very effective points by exploring the monstrous natural disasters that affect humans across the globe regardless of their economic status and homeland.

Wells details that the wildfires that ravished the “most glamorous state” of California in 2018, are as equally destructive as those that hit the impoverished Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh (6).  Natural disasters do not see wealth. They don’t just target the poor and less fortunate. They occur everywhere. However, the most affected humans do not live in the posh communities of Santa Barbara,  but in the poorest countries and towns.   Inhabitants of these hardest hit locations live in swamps and floodplains and don’t have the economics to support a rebuild of their community after such disasters occur (9).

Well states that “climate change is too indiscriminate” (9).  Climate change is a global threat to all humans that plausibly warrants a full global response.  However, that global response is still not happening and Wells claims that humans are unfortunately retreating from assuming responsibility to global warming and to one another (10).

1:2 Summary of Feel Free

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Summary of Feel Free by Zadie Smith

I chose to summarize Zadie Smith’s piece entitled “Feel Free” because her writing style connected to me and I believe I am able to describe how her essay is well constructed at times and poorly constructed at others.

She begins by simply describing climate change as a series of feelings and mental images we once had and can relate to as opposed to understanding all the science behind it.  Many readers of this passage may not have a science background so her appeal is more general and is relate-able to the average reader. She explores the use of pathos by intricately bringing the readers into blooming thriving spring-time gardens with her and including detailed memories of blazing summers and and frosty winter holly berries.  She utilizes sensory details that have the readers actually seeing, smelling and feeling the seasons change. The reader is drawn into the world Smith once knew and is reminiscing about as they reminisce alongside her.

Zadie Smith describes the time of the year and the seasons that correspond to it with great detail.  She creates a Kinkade-like painting with her words.  Just as you are captured into this world that once existed she then shifts and begins to imagine a future that is not as beautiful and picturesque as she so nicely recalled it to be.  She starts a long and very confusing make-believe scenario that plays out in the future as she encounters her future granddaughter who is very upset about the world she lives in.  She loses her sense of ethos at this point, as I began to question how she can generalize about a 7 year old thoughts and questions and do with such negativity. The scenarios she conjures up and the no-so-appropriate conversations she has with this child leave her credibility in question.  This selfish and self-indulgent tangent just seems very out of place in her essay and unnecessary to her main point. I felt audiences around the globe losing interest at this point in the piece as Smith becomes now an unreliable and unrelate-able source.

This piece has a tone of bereavement, melancholy and loss to it, which relates to many readers who may also feel climate change is emotional and not all scientific.

Zadie Smith has magically shown and directed the reader’s mind to a world we once enjoyed – void of the threat of climate change. She vividly presents us with the world we can never quite enjoy again.  She unfolds the current climate status and finally asks us to look ahead to start to  reset our thoughts and determine what actions and plans we can do today to help prepare for the uncertain future.

I think for my first essay I will try to detail further examples of the three components of ethos, pathos and logos that are present and not as I summarize this essay.   I will also go into further detail about what appealed and worked in her writing and what did not.

1.1 Proud Latina or Shamed Feminist?

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This Sunday’s NFL Superbowl halftime show featuring JLo and Shakira has rattled me.  As it began, I Facetimed with my 18 year daughter from her dorm at college.  We pre-planned to dance and sing along with these two Latina artists who represent both our native countries since we could not be together this Superbowl Sunday.  But as the show unfurled, the hairs on my neck started to rise. Wow, I am watching a half-naked, grinding on the floor, POLE DANCING, Jennifer Lopez perform? What were we watching? A family friendly halftime show or a rated R very public nationally televised version of the movie Hustlers?  And is that JLo’s 11 year old daughter alongside dozens of other little girls, on stage seeing her mommy do this too?

I recently read an article in the Washington Examiner that embodied with how I am feeling about this. Madeline Fry describes in great detail how this half-time show sidelines what we try to instill in our young daughters about empowerment.    Fry’s article appealed to me because it was written just as if she was thinking as I had been on Sunday. Her diction was direct and related to my thoughts.  I have made sure that my daughter has always known her worth and she is proud of what she has accomplished so much so that she attends one of the country’s top universities, Cornell University.  This short performance for millions showed me and my daughter clearly how someone like JLo who is so successful and empowered to so much for young girls as an idol, can do so much damage.

When the half-time show was over I looked at my daughter and said, “Wow, I wish I could have enjoyed that with my eyes closed – it would have been much better.”  It was a very disappointing moment for this Proud Latina Mother. 

0: Would you like fries with that order?

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In 2014, my friend Morgan Spurlock released his first controversial documentary, SuperSize Me. Morgan embarked on a 30 day challenge of eating a diet entirely from the infamous fast food chain, McDonald’s  His rules were simple: 30 days, 3 meals per day, if the cashier offered to SuperSize his meal he had to agree and he had to everything on the menu at least once.

During these 30 days, he exposed just how fast food chains begin to appeal to children from a very early age with playful characters, fun commercials, birthday parties in fun on-site playgrounds and thrill of receiving that mystery Happy Meal toy.  As he highlighted the tantrums that disappointed children were having as the drove by a McDonalds without stopping, he was also experiencing tantrum of his own.  He was beginning to feel depression, lethargy, terrible headaches and bouts of sexual dysfunction with his girlfriend.  The only cure for these ever present symptoms was more MickeyDees!

As the 30 days concluded, I questioned if I would ever feed my two year old daughter this dangerous food. We were invited to his cast “wrap” party that he held at a NYC McDonald’s Playland with all the happy meals you could eat.  I brought my daughter my own food that day and decided to never feed her fast food for as long as I had control of her meals.

In one month, Morgan had gained over 24lbs, he was very sick and his liver was in failure because of fatty deposits that had begun to build up.  It took him almost a year and half to lose the weight and regain his health.  This documentary not only changed how I viewed fast food decisions for my own family, but it put into motion a nationwide campaign that made all fast food establishments revamp their menus and advertising tactics to offer healthier options,.   and no, you will never be asked if you want that Super-Sized ever again.