"Economy Alters How Americans Are Moving"

     While going through articles in NewYorkTimes.com , one caught my eye which is "Economy Alters How Are Moving" by Jennifer Medina and Sabrina Tavernise. The following article is mainly how the downfall of the economy has recently affected where Americans are now choosing to live. In the past, many economic drops that have happened have always affected the migration patterns of hundreds of American citizens. This is no different, except that researchers are now saying that homeowners are stuck in situations where they cannot sell their houses and are worried that they would not be able to find jobs in other cities. According to new research by Census Bureau and the Internal Revenue Service by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire has shown that although migration is slowing down, there has been a shift from the Northern states to Southern states.

     This and other new data by the I.R.S also show that there has been a migration from states, such as Arizona, Florida, and Nevada. Majority states such as this have been hit with the recession and are now losing population. It's also mentioned in the article during economic hardships, it gets extremely difficult for the population to move towards states whose own economy and employee rates are increasing and in the number of residents as well. I find this article important because for one it shows how every few years when there is a downfall in economy, Americans tend to migrate towards more favoring states. This article also shows us that migration in America goes along side with the economy and is especially common in American history. With the recent drop in economy, many people are moving more to the South, where there are more jobs available and maybe in the future they will once again migrate somewhere else.

"Letter From Birmingham Jail"

     In this week's blog post, I have decided to my article on Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter From Birmingham Jail". The speaker is of course, Martin Luther King Jr. and the purpose of this letter to inform the audience, which were the writers of a newspaper article, and to also persuade and explain to them why the article they have written is misleading and utterly wrong. Another reason he wrote this letter was to meet with the writers personally and this shows that Martin Luther King Jr. sees them as equals. He wrote his entire letter from jail and mentions that it is longer since he is in jail. The occasion is April 16, 1963 in Birmingham Jail and the subject is about civil rights and freedom. Throughout his letter, Martin Luther King Jr. kept his tone calm and encouraging, but in the end he became more emotional. In writing his letter, he also has many repetitions, restatements, and parallelism, such as "we were here..." and "before the pilgrim...". He also makes an allusion towards the Declaration of Independence and the Plymouth.
     The main reason why he wrote this letter was because a newspaper had written an article about the Whites attacking the Blacks and basically showing that they are supporting what is wrong, instead of what is right. Martin Luther King Jr. also wrote a paradox about this attack, which was that the police are using violence to gain social justice and in other towns there is nonviolence because there is segregation. This is also considered emotional persuasive because he influences the reader. He especially influences the reader by his efforts under circumstances. Even though he is in jail, he is still fighting for civil rights when he could easily not do anything. One other important aspect of his letter is that, Martin Luther King Jr. says that they will reach freedom, its only a matter if time and he is confident that one day there will be freedom. He starts his letter with logos and ends it with pathos.

Speech Presentations

      In this weeks speech presentations I enjoyed listening to every single one of them, but the one presentation I thought gave the most information was Haroutiun and Micheal's speech project. Their project was on Franklin D. Roosevelt's speech about the attack on Pearl Harbor, which occurred during World War I by the Japanese army. The reason I think their presentation provided more information was because they were able to pinpoint many of the literary devices and rhetorical devices from within the speech. They had also written down a couple of points about Franklin D. Roosevelt's biography in the beginning of their project. Throughout their presentation, they had also written down important points about the speech and had even provided a short video and a few audio clips of certain parts from his speech for the entire class to hear.

"Rajaratnam Is Sentenced To 11 Years"

     While scrolling through NYTimes.com, one particular article caught my eye, which is titled "Rajaratnam Is Sentenced To 11 Years", by Peter Lattman. The following article is about a hedge fund founder, named Raj Rajaratnam who was recently arrested for inside trading. He also received the longest sentence ever for this kind of fraud, which is eleven years. The billionaire was the former head of the Galleon Group Hedge fund and Judge Richard J. Holwell fined him with an amount of $10 million and also ordered that he forfeit $53.8 million. Before his sentence, Rajaratnam was put on a two-month trial during May, in which the jury convicted him of fraud involving securities and also conspiracy. He was originally arrested in October 2009 and declined to speak at his own trial.

     Although, Rajaratnam received the longest sentence for insider trading there was still a possibility he could  have actually received a sentence from up to nineteen to twenty four years under federal guidelines. During his trial on Thursday, prosecutor Reed Brodsky said that he deserves a larger penalty for his crimes, but Judge Holwell lowered his sentence because of health factors. Rajaratnam has diabetes that could eventually lead to kidney failure and decided that jail would be more of an extreme experience for him since he has a serious health condition. This article really grabbed my attention because it seems to me that after the economy began to drop, more and more top business men are being caught with fraud. Now a days, it also seems that this is beginning to spread throughout a number of companies and becoming a threat to society as well.

My Five Virtues

     After taking a look over my life in the past two days, I have come up with five virtues that I find to be extremely important for me. These five virtues are order, sincerity, motivation, education, and perseverance.
Each of these virtues have different meanings that I find essential.

The five virtues are:

1. Order- Staying organized helps to keep our plans and time managed more easily.
2. Sincerity- Be honest with others, but not in way where you are hurting them.
3. Education- Always learn new things and keep up to date in current events.
4. Motivation- Always try to have something to look forward to be doing and challenge yourself.
5. Perseverance- Never give up and always keep trying to be better.

     In the past two days the most trouble I had is probably working on motivation. Especially because of the cloudy weather yesterday, I felt lazy and the warm clothing I was wearing made it difficult getting myself to simply stay awake. Last night, after finishing my homework, all I was in the mood for was lying on the couch and watching television. Sometimes, I went on my computer and surfed the web. It really felt like one of those days where you simply want to be lazy and not do anything for the rest of the night. I know I probably could have done other better activities in my time. Hopefully, the next time it is a rainy day, I'll find a way to motivate myself to study a little extra for my classes or maybe read a book.

"Straw into Gold"

     In this week's blog, I have chosen to do it on Sandra Cisneros's autobiography, "Straw into Gold". The speaker, Sandra Cisneros begins the introductions to autobiography in France, while she is there to attend school. Cisneros puts much emphasis on her heritage since it is a great part of her life and background to many of her stories. We are able to understand this in her autobiography and as we read on we learn that although she her heritage is Mexican, she is in fact born in Chicago. Cisneros grew up in a family of six brothers and as a tradition she was expected to get married before she left the house, but instead she went against her culture and left in hopes of becoming a writer. In the end, Cisneros was successful and says in her autobiography that it was because of her parents why she was a successful writer. She inherited a sappy heart from her father and her intelligence from her mother.

     Cisneros focuses her introduction mainly on her successes and achievements. One of the examples she gives is when she was asked to cook corn tortillas. She had never cooked Mexican food before in her life, but she tried to do her best and didn't give up. She compares this experience to an allusion of a fairy tale. She's being asked to do the impossible, but in the end she becomes successful. Cisneros also compares to another time she had to write her MFA exam and had felt the same feeling that it is impossible, but in the end she had once again achieved success. Overall, Cisneros wrote about self-achievement and despite how impossible a task might seem, with a little hard work you can turn straw into gold. The subject of her story was her successes and the purpose was to show them to the reader, who is the audience. The occasion is her life and her tone is full of pride.