I have never been a fan of doing interviews, but I had a good time doing this one. Before we started the recording section of this project, my partner and I talked for a while about which questions we were going to ask each other and gave each other a chance to formulate a response, so we were not putting the other on the spot during the interview. We also went over the questions we had in mind to make sure we weren’t going to be asking about something that would make the other uncomfortable talking about. My favorite question that I got asked that stood out to me was, “what big existential or philosophical or life question are you least sure about?” For least sure about, I didn’t know what my answer would be because when thinking about concepts such as those, I usually stick to the ones I am confident about and can talk for a while on. So, to answer this question, I talked about life other than here on planet Earth. We have such an extensive solar system that there must be other life forms out there. This question stood out to me because I think it made both of us more comfortable with the interview, and it opened us up more. As I mentioned before, the fact that I had a good time doing this project surprised me. In social settings where I don’t know anyone well enough, I tend to be reserved and anxious, and although I was still feeling anxious while recording, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. I think I would do this again with someone in my life, and I think it would be better if it were a close friend or someone in my family.
Oral history is an essential aspect of history. Many stories and traditions are passed down from generation to generation through oral history and storytelling. Unfortunately, much of oral history is lost to time and/or is altered as time goes on. By this, I mean that details are forgotten or are over/under exaggerated. With technology and websites such as Storycorps, stories that may be passed down over generations can actually be saved so that many others can hear about them. For example, before we recorded our own interviews, I listened to a story about a wife and a husband who lost their son on September 11th, 2001. In April of 2020, the husband ended up dying of COVID-19. The story was a remembrance the couple recorded before the husband died but was reposted in an attempt to remember both the son and the husband. Without a website like Storycorps, not as many people would have been able to listen to their story. One aspect of Storycorps that makes the website unique is that you can upload something of any time length, meaning you could tell a story that’s been passed down and you want others to hear it, or you can share a conversation that you and others would like to remember for a long time.
Personally, I like the way that Storycorps is set up. I think it is easy to navigate and use. Exploring the different stories they had was what I was drawn to at first because it’s one of the first things to pop up, so it is easy to scroll and see what options they have to listen to. It is almost the same thing with the “Discover” option right next to the stories options. It also seems easy to get involved with bigger Storycorps projects with the “Participate” option, so I could easily browse through to see what they have if I was ever interested in doing so. As for posting the interview, I thought that to be pretty easy as well. When going through the motions and answering/filling out the required sections, Storycorps made it clear what they wanted you to do. The animation aspect on Storycorps was pretty cool as well. The guidance I would give to someone who is learning how to use Storycorps would be to make an account on the website because it opens up a couple of more options for you to explore. I learned a few things about using Storycorps and doing this project. I was able to learn more about other people through the stories they have shared and the conversations they have had with friends and family. About myself, I have learned that through planning, it is easier to be more open to any questions you are asked. I have also learned that planning helps to answer those questions as well. Asking questions that can be considered “ice breakers” is also a great way to make the interview flow better and make participants feel more comfortable. Overall, I think this project had many positive aspects to it.
In the fictional “I Survived Hurricane Katrina,” author of the series, Lauren Tarshis, was able to share what it was like in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina made landfall in 2005 through a fictional family, the Tuckers. Although her audience leans more towards younger generations, anyone can read about Barry Tucker and his family’s experiences riding out the storm in their house in the Lower Ninth Ward, as well as Barry’s journey when he gets separated from his family as they try to escape the floodwaters. Along with the rest of her “I Survived” series, by using fictional characters, she was able to write about the storm itself and make the Tuckers appeal to the age range of kids who are more likely to read her books. The book is mainly a narrative, but Tarshis adds pictures throughout to show visuals of the effects of Hurricane Katrina to keep her audience engaged. The book’s cover is also a way to maintain engagement and catch their hold because while it may have looked dramatic to them, the situation was common with the high waters. In her style of writing, which Tarshis learned when she first started writing children’s books, she used more pathos than anything as she is trying to establish a connection between Barry Tucker and her readers. Even if many readers don’t feel a connection because they have never experienced a hurricane, Barry’s relationship with Cruz (the “killer” dog) may interest them as well as his relationship with his family and his younger sister, who got sick as the family was trying to evacuate. To add to where else she has gained her writing skills, Tarshis has also held the position of editorial Director of Language Arts for Scholastic’s Classroom Magazine Division. One of the most considerable constraints Tarshis may have faced was making sure not to overlook the effects on people who lived below/close to the poverty line, as many are struggling with the after-effects of Katrina today. This idea can be continued over to the larger conversation about this piece and to why she may have created this story, which not only emphasizes one of the greatest disasters in United States history.
Tarshis, Lauren, and Scott Dawson. I Survived Hurricane Katrina, 2005 (#3). Scholastic, 2011.
Literacy has a different meaning for everyone. Google defines it as “the ability to read and write.” To me, it is much bigger than that and does not only relate to “the ability to read and write.” To me, it means to be fluent (or even learning to be fluent) in something you are passionate about. Becoming fluent in your passions is not a journey, as most people like to explain it. It’s an adventure. It does not have an end or a stopping point. There is always a way to keep moving towards fluency. Like with the weather and its radar, it is always moving, forming, and dissipating in a continuous cycle. The weather never stops. Just as the wind never stops blowing, opportunities to grow through literacy don’t disappear when you think you are at that fluent level. Most of the time, there will be factors around you so that you can grow your literacy knowledge.
One of the things I am passionate about is the weather, and I am learning to become fluent in reading, creating, and analyzing multiple types of weather maps such as isotherm maps, maps with different types of air mass fronts, wind speeds, the jet stream, and even radar. Although I have been in love with the weather for as long as I can remember, my skills relating to weather maps have only started developing within these last couple of years. The way you read a map heavily depends on what type of weather map you are looking at. For example, with an isotherm map, you are given an area that is separated by lines and colors. Each color represents a difference in temperatures. The point of an isotherm map is to connect the places with similar temperatures and show the variation in the areas that have different temperatures. On the other hand, a weather radar shows which direction weather is moving and how much precipitation rain, snow, or thunderstorms may bring. Usually, a weather radar is pretty easy to read as you press a motion button, and it shows you which way a weather system is moving. On the map itself, darker colors mean heavy precipitation, while lighter colors mean the opposite. Most maps will have a key so that the viewer can tell the difference between the types of precipitation. Some radars, like the Weather Channel, will even show the lightning strikes within a certain radius! Since I am doing a weather forecasting concentration, I will always need to be working towards fluency in creating and analyzing these types of weather maps. Becoming literate in these topics has been quickly becoming one of my favorite things to learn. It might be a challenging adventure to become completely fluent, but it will be worth it in the long run because I will be getting the chance to help people by letting them know what the weather will be like so they can prepare accordingly.
One of my favorite literacy adventures that I am also currently on is the one regarding reading and writing. Although I may never be close to fluent, my literacy story starts when I first fell in love with reading while my third-grade teacher, Ms. Wiggins, introduced me to reading for pleasure. One of our homework assignments throughout the year was known as a reading log. Much like logging weather over a period of time for climate analysis purposes, we were to read for a given amount of time for a certain amount of days per week and write a summary about what we read. I always enjoyed this assignment, and I never really thought of it as homework or as anything too tedious, like I thought my math homework was. I also liked writing the reading comprehension summaries for the reading log, but I did not start seriously writing anything until later in my life. These reading logs are what introduced me to book series such as The Magic Treehouse, Judy B. Jones, and other popular Scholastic bookfair books.
This is also around the same time I started falling in love with the weather (even though I was afraid of thunderstorms growing up) and other natural disasters. My passion for natural geological and atmospherical events came from not only the Discovery channel’s “Storm Chasers” show but also from books such as “I Survived Hurricane Katrina, 2005”, “I Survived the San Francisco Earthquake, 1906”, “I Survived the Joplin Tornado, 2011”, and more! Ever since I read the Lauren Tarshis books, I have been fascinated by such events and am now glad that I am finally in a school where I can study these things and make them my career. I hope that one day I will have the opportunity to mix my two passions and write a book related to popular weather events and their effects, whether that be on a fictional character or somone in real-time.
From the time I was born to my sophomore year in high school, I lived with my grandparents half of the time, so I grew very close with them. Before my grandma retired, she was an English teacher as well as a substitute teacher. Growing up, my relationship with her influenced my literacy journey as she was constantly pushing my brother and I to read, whether that be the National Geographic magazines that we regularly received or an actual book. Like the “I Survived” books, the National Geographic magazines also had an influence on my opinion of weather, geology, and even astronomy. In my free time, I loved to read the issues: “Mount Saint Helens: New Life in the Blastzone” (May 2010), “Water: Our Thirsty World” (April 2010), “What’s Up with the Weather?” (September 2012), “Solar Super Storms” (June 2012), and many more! Even if I wasn’t truly reading them, I loved to flip through the many pictures the magazines included. Another early influence I had in my life came from my grandmother, father, and mother, who I always saw pick up a book, so in addition to having to read for school assignments, I may have started to mirror my family and their reading habits. Once I started getting into reading in my free time, my grandmother was always taking us to our local library for my brother and I to browse and pick a couple of books, and it quickly became one of my favorite places to go. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library had summer reading events during the summers, which were essentially just like the third-grade reading log but online. A difference between the summer reading and the school assignments was that you unlocked a new “prize” of sorts for every couple of books you read, one of which was a free Wendy’s frosty coupon.
Between the third-grade reading logs, summer reading events, and the app I currently use now at nineteen called Goodreads, I have a habit of recording what I read, similar to what meteorologists do with weather data such as temperature, humidity, and windspeeds. Just as the wind shifts based on its environment, my interests in reading shifted as I grew older. I would do through periods where it’s either very windy, and I read a lot, or there would be minimal wind, and I hadn’t touched a book in a long time. The types of genres I read also changed, like the weather, as I grew older. Like the changing seasons, many readers have a shift in the kinds of books they like to read. When I was younger, my favorite genres were mystery novels and the “Choose your own Adventure” books, which I thought were similar to video games. Now, I mostly read either fantasy or contemporary romance novels, but part of me would like to branch back out and start reading mystery novels again. I wish I still had access to the readings logs I had as a child so that I could compare them to the reading records I now keep on Goodreads. Comparing and analyzing is another weather-related factor I am also working to become fluent in, as comparing the current and past data is very important when looking at specific trends such as hurricanes and tornadoes.
Many say that quarantine was not a good time for them, but I found that it was quite the opposite for me. During this time, I was able to get closer to my family and my group of closest friends. The wind also began to pick up again as I fell back into love with reading. Although an expensive hobby, I have found that spending my time immersed in worlds that are not my own is one of my favorite things to do with my free time. Last year, from May to December, I read about forty-five books, one of my favorites being the “Six of Crows” series by Leigh Bardugo, but the book that got me back into the practice of reading again was “The Cruel Prince” by Holly Black. This year, I am almost done with my thirty-fourth book, “Kingdom of the Wicked” by Kerri Maniscalco, hoping to finish at least fifty by the end of this year. I was able to keep track of this with the Goodreads app, which not only allows you to keep track of the number of books you’ve read but also allows you to create lists with the books you want to read and are currently reading. Not only is reading a way for me to escape, but it also helps to fuel any writing or short story ideas that I have and is an excellent way to take a quick break from school work and read a chapter or two.
I have known I loved to write since eighth grade, when I started creating my own stories and plotlines. That love grew during my later high school years when I took a creating writing class. In this class, I got the opportunity to learn and improve my writing skills in fictional writing, poetry, short stories, screenwriting, and more. My favorite sections of the class were screenwriting and short stories, as these reflect the type of books I like to read. It was an online class, but my teacher would meet with us in person every once in a while and was very supportive of the pieces I’ve written. I have started many of what I would like to be novels in the past, but I have unfortunately never finished one. My downfall is that when it comes to creative writing, I get anxious to let others read and critique the stories that I have written for fun, but this is something that I hope to overcome in the future. Even though I am an Atmospheric Science major, I hope to be able to publish a novel of some sort, whether it is fantasy, a mystery, or something else. As I mentioned before, because of my career path, I hope to one day write a book intertwining both my passion for weather and my love for reading and writing like the “I Survived” books do. The same hope can also be applied to nonfiction writing pieces in magazines such as National Geographic and Discover.
Photo by Author
Most people talk about journeys having a start point and an endpoint. I don’t necessarily agree with this when it comes to reading and writing because there is no “end date,” which is why I prefer the term adventure. Much like a weather radar loop, literacy adventures have no “end date.” A weather radar loop is a continuous cycle of incoming types of precipitation such as rain and snow. Improving your literacy can be thought of in the same way just with reading and writing instead of rain and snow. There is always a way to improve your writing skills through editing and new writing styles. The same thing can apply to reading as there are so many new books published daily, there is always a way to broaden the type of literacy you consume. The weather has no stopping point, so why should you?
