Erica and I conducted one of our interviews on Tuesday.  We knew nothing about the topic until we started talking to her friend's mom.  We learned a lot of things about raw milk that some people do not know.  We also learned that it is illegal in New Jersey.  Raw milk has a golden color to it because of the nutrueits in it.  It also has a lot of health benefits.  Our interviewee's kids had a lot of health issues when they were babies and then they started drinking raw milk and it was if their ear infections were cured.  So we asked her why she thinks its banned in New Jersey.  It mostly has to do with the pasterazation process.  There are 29 states where it is illegal.  It just seems wrong since it seems like it has a lot of health benefits.  I would think they would want to make this available to everyone.  Raw milk in retail stores cost about the same as a regular gallon of milk.  Our interviewee says she hasn't bought regualar milk for so long that she doesn't remember how much it costs.  She told us what raw milk costs and it is about the same.

I would like to mention the three terms first.  Schneider describes what these three terms mean on page 7 of the reading.  Good food is tasty, clean food is sustainable and helps perserve the enviornment, and fair food is produced in socially sustainable ways while focusing on fair wages.  I like that he explained these terms.  When you read the title you want to know what he is going to talk about.  I think we all knew what he meant by good food, but what is fair food?  I think it is good that he explained it.  I really enjoyed this quote on page 398, "As you might expect from this crowd and this occasion, the talk at the table was mainly about food. Yet this was not the usual food talk you hear nowadays; less about recipes and restaurants, it revolved around specific plants and animals and fungi, and the places where they lived." I think this quote is really important to the reading because a lot of people talk about restaruants and recipes and not enough about where the food actually comes from.  It is important to know where your food comes from, so that you might be able to reproduce it or if you get sick you know why.

These are the questions Erica and I are going to be using as a guideline.  With this interview as well as someone in the student health center we will be able to have a strong understanding on where to go with our research project.

Why is raw milk illegal?

Is it healthier than other milk?
Is it expensive?
Is it only illegal in NJ or are there other states that it is banned?
How did your family decide to drink raw milk?
Is there any unhealthy factors?
What is in raw milk?

1. How much more expensive is it to buy all organic?

2. How much money do you usually make at your business?
3. Is everything availiable organic?

4. Do you get a lot of customers?
5. Do many people lose weight by eating organic?

6. What are the health benefits?
7. Does organic food have a different taste then regular food?
8. What do your products come from?
9. Do you have customers that have a lot of questions about organic?

10. Is it possible to have allergies toward organic?

Erica and I are probably going to do some research on an organic food place.  My dad tries to cook all organic although fails.  We buy organic milk and organic crushed tomatos for our homemade spagetti sauce.  I'm looking forward to doing some research on these places.

    First, for "What is Oral History" I want to use this quote. "methods of eliciting and recording them were more or less rigorous in any given case, the absence of audio- and videotape recorders--or digital recording devices--necessitated reliance on human note-takers, thus raising questions about reliability and veracity."  This is a very good quote.  How can someone from this time agree with something said a long time ago, if they did not cover all aspects of an arguement?  Let me re-phrase.  If you do not do all research necessary do not expect someone to believe you.  It is just like when we write papers.  We have to be sure that all our information is 100% accurate.  That's why we should not use sources like Wikipedia or sources that only say one side of an arguement.  Oral History is really important and we want to be sure that all accounts of the past are 100% reliable.
    "Although the conversation takes the form of an interview, in which one person--the interviewer--asks questions of another person--variously referred to as the interviewee or narrator--oral history is, at its heart, a dialogue."  Before this quote was said there was information on how interviewers used tape recorders.  These interviewers had to be extremely careful doing interviews.  If there is one thing I learned from my Journalism classes it is to always make sure your recorder is fully charged or make sure you have extra batteries.  Also if you do a paper and pencil interview to make sure you have extra materials, and always you a pencil on a rainy day.  I think recorded interviews are very reliable for past accounts.

    I really like the part about accessing an interview.  The first step is to consider the reliablilty of the interviewer.  If the interviewer cannot be trusted the interview will be unsuccessful.  They have to be knowledgable about the subject they are interviewing on or the interview will fail.

 

"Like it Was"

And there it is.  The first words in Chapter 3 talks about batteries.  I guess my journalism teachers didn't lie.  Not that they would, I mean it only makes sense to have extra batteries and alkaline batteries (although expensive) seem to be the best bet.  The beginning of Chapter 3 talks about batteries running out even if you do not know it.  You could have a kick a** interview and when you get back to your station you have about a quarter of it.  Bring extra batteries!!    Also the chapter just refreshes the readers mind on what the different buttons do and how to work them.  The writer also talks about different types of tapes.  Thin tapes can cause an echo and you want tapes that you do not have to turn off often.  When doing an interview you should get one with a built in microphone.  This way the person being interviewed  will have less chance of being scared or not being able to answer a question.  The writer also talks about cleaning a recorder.  This should be done because your recorder needs to work properly.  There is a checklist that the writer talks about that you should have when going out to do an interview.   There is a lot of inforamtion on what kind of peice to write and what to ask.  You should also make a list of facts of the person you plan to interview.  You can go back to this list whenever you need to and for whatever reason you need to.  You need to ask "daring questions" to get to the surface answers.  "You may be rewarded for boldness.

    "they focus on the personal and the social in a balance appropriate to the inquiry; and they occur in specific places or sequence of places."  This is the first quote I pulled from the reading "Narrative Inquiry."  This quote stood out to me because we are talking about the importance of place in our "Twitterives." In the reading, place is talked about as a dimension within an inquiry or environment.  On page 54 the author states that Ming Fang experienced culture shock from moving from China to Canada.  We see that place is really important in narratives.  "In this response, our language was taken as representative of our present-day tellers' point of view. We have reworked the text to strengthen the narrative links between then and now" (61).  I think this means that we have to be careful how we phrase things about our past because it may be taken differently when we re-tell the story.  Language in a narrative is really important because how you say something and what you actually say can be two completly different things.  "What this response has highlighted for us is that as narrative inquirers we work within the space not only with our participants but also with ourselves" (61).  As we do this, our past shows through and we remember it, whether we want to or not.  With writing a narrative you can chose what the outcome was into what you wanted it to be.  Once you do this place and space become easy to explain.
    "Situating Narrative Inquiry" was plain awful.  I'm sorry but it was.  I did not understand it. "Concern with humans, experience, recognizing the power in understanding the particular, and broader conceptions of knowing coalesce in flashes of insight, and old ways of researching and strategies for research seem inadequate to the task of understanding humans and human interaction" (8).  This phrase looked interesting, so I put it down.  Coalesce according to dictionary.com means "to grow together or into one body." So I am going to take a shot at the meaning of this sentence. Maybe the more a person narratates their life the more the person reading can learn to understand and relate to that person.  Now I don't know if that's true, but for the sake of trying to understand this piece I decided to take a shot.  "During the research process, both the researcher and researched will be suspended in a static state, each uninfluenced by the other" (11).  "Static" means showing little or no change.  I don't agree with this statement.  If I am understanding this correctly, it means that after a researcher conducts research, their attitude remains unchanged.  I don't think this would happen.  If I am conducting research, I would want to find all kinds of research and something might shift the way I think