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This class was the first time that I actually had a blog.  I didn't really see anything great about the blog and it seemed sort of like a waist of time.  The only helpful part about it was when I posted what I was going to write about and then other people commented on it.  They told me what they liked or disliked about my subject and the information I planned to use to persuade the audience.  This information did help me a little bit in writing my paper.  But besides that, nobody commented on anything else I put, so it was basically just putting my thoughts on the blog.  Which in my view of thought, I can do in my head and if they are really important then I will right them down on paper.  I thought blogging about the reading that we were supposed to do may have been good becasue nobody really talked when we discussed it in class.  In this case though, I thought we should have made just one blog and then have everyone comment on that so everyones thoughts were on one post instead of several different blogs.  Overall, my first experience with blogging was very poor and I will probably never use it again unless it is required for a class.  I feel like if I want to express my thoughts and have people comment on it, it would be way easier with a social network such as Facebook.  On these sites, people will actually look at what I put and comment on it.

Commonplace Topic

For commonplace, I am going to be writing about how Branch Rickey, the manager of the Dodger's, was the leading figure in desegregating baseball instead of Jackie Robinson.  This idea originally came to mind when I played against kids of other races in sports when I was younger.  This made me sort of curious as to how they first started intermixing the different races and how hard that must have been for them kids to try to do.  When I was younger, I was mostly told that it was Jackie Robinson that started the desegregation of baseball.  I became curious of this because I wondered how Robinson could be the starting influence when blacks and whites weren't getting along at that time.  He wouldn't be able to just join a team by himself.  After doing a little research, I found that it was Branch Rickey's bold move that initiated the desegregation.  Robinson needed a manager that was willing to run the tables and make this jump into history.  Rickey went against a lot of people's beleifs on the subject and he created a lot of enemies.  Without the this dramatic move by one of the managers, African Americans may have never started playing in what was an all white league at that time.

Secondary Sources

For my secondary sources, I am using:

• A Necessary Signifier: The Adaptation of Robinson's Body-Image in 'The Jackie Robinson Story'
• A Name, a Number, and a Picture: The Cinematic Memorialization of Jackie Robinson
• A book that I have in my room

I plan on using these sources to expand on my primary research on Jackie Robinson.  These articles are full of information and will provide many facts that I will be able to use as supporting evidence to convey my thoughts.  The articles tell about Jackie's life and the struggles he had becoming a professional athlete and how he had to deal with the problems of race.

Primary Source description

My primary source is a picture of Jackie Robinson holding a bat and posing for a picture.  In the picture he looks a little confused and distracted.  I will use this picture to talk about the impact he had on baseball and how his presence helped with desegregation.

Reading Questions

Evidence and claims go together when a person is trying to persuade or convey a certain idea.  A person used evidence to solidify their claim.   The evidence helps the writer prove their idea by stating facts.  This makes the writing more believable and then the reader won’t think that the writing is just a biased paper.  It is important to link the evidence to your claims, as I said before, to make your writing a solid piece of work that directly states what a writer wants to convey and then there is evidence to support that statement.  Without evidence, the reader probably wouldn’t believe much that’s in the article and they would think it’s just someone’s personal opinion.

                I will use evidence in my analytical research paper to support the claims that I have made.  The evidence will help strengthen my view on the subject of Jackie Robinson and how he changed baseball history.  By using my sources, I will compile facts that I will use to support certain parts of my paper.  This will make my paper convey readers to see what point I am trying to get across and will hopefully make them think the same way.  I will use evidence to support all of my claims so that there won’t be any doubt in the readers mind as to if my information is true or if it is just an opinion paper.

Primary Source Summary

I am using a picture of Jackie Robinson for my primary source.  The picture is of Jackie holding the baseball bat.  Jackie’s body is pointed towards the camera like he is posing for a picture, but he is looking off to the side as if he was looking at something that is far away such as the fence.  The bat is laid on his shoulder instead of having it up and ready like he is ready to hit the ball.  This could portray that maybe he is lazy.  The frame is brown except for a little patch of green in the upper left hand corner that looks like grass.  The brown frame looks like it is supposed to resemble the outside of a baseball.  The picture is surrounded by a pattern of small laces except for the corners which have what looks like big knots tied in the laces.  In the upper left hand corner there is a little baseball with Jackie’s number on it.  The small baseball in the corner is white with red laces but the frame of the picture, which looks like it is supposed to resemble the outer layer of a baseball, is brown with light brown laces.  Jackie is in his dodger’s uniform with a dodger’s hat on.  The Jersey is white with blue lettering and Jackie has a blue long sleeve shirt on underneath his jersey.  At the bottom of the page is a title block that is red, white and blue.  In this block it says Jackie Robinson’s name and second base in regular bold font.  Off to the left, it has Dodger’s in cursive and fancy lettering.  The frame is sort of dull with a very colorful picture of Jackie Robinson inside of it.