Journal 10 from Lexia Wilson

As of now my active reading in the book "Holding On" is going fairly well. I am doing the same things I did before such as writing down the names and places of people. I also ask some questions if I have any and I nut shell the person after I am done reading about them. The final thing that I do is figure out what category that specific person falls into eccentric, visionary, or a dreamer. Some strengths that I am seeing so far with in the book is how they use their details and questions to really make sure you understand what that person went through. I honestly have not seen any weaknesses so far...I am really enjoying this book because it is so interesting.

My two favorite stories within pages 48-82 is the one about Geneva Tisdale and the other one is the story about Donald Bean. Geneva was a cook at the Woolworth Lunch Counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. She was working there and was a apart of the sit ins during the Civil Rights Movement. During this time they would not serve black people in this restaurant they would only serve white people. "It made you feel funny-I'm not good enough to sit at the counter with them, but I'm good enough to fix their food." Though what those white people didn't know was that their food was being prepared by black cooks. Eventually so many people came into the restaurant and just sat there. So there was no longer any room to serve people so the restaurant shut down for a little bit but they found a way to solve their problem...they would serve their workers but the press didn't have to know who they were serving just as long as they knew that they were black. Before you knew it the press was there and the store was back in business. What I found to being compelling about this story is that they couldn't just serve everyone equally they had to find a scandalous way around doing the right thing.

My second favorite story was about Donald Bean. He developed a place in Moscow, Texas called the dinosaur gardens. Donald had a love for prehistoric creatures so he built this place thinking that others could share that love...but no one came. He built 11 different dinosaurs all throughout a path and around a swamp. I learned that he also spent all of his families money in order to build this attraction. It cost him about 100,000 dollars. They then had no money so his wife had to come out of retirement and get a job so they could bring in some money. Even though no one came to his attraction he would still go out everyday and visit his dinosaurs. What I found compelling about this story was that when he built this attraction he thought that people would come and share his love for dinosaurs but they didn't. I was curious to know how many Moscow's there were in the united states because when I think of Moscow I think of Russia. So the towns named Moscow could have been from Russian immigrants. What I learned from the article link at the bottom was that there are at least 30 towns named Moscow but they all are not named after Moscow, Russia only 2 of them are named for that.

The similarities between these two stories is that they both had a dream something that they wanted to accomplish. Geneva wanted to be able to serve everybody equally and Donald wanted to share his passion for prehistoric creatures with everyone else. What is different about these stories is the way that Isay puts himself in the story. In Geneva's story he starts out with a little section that is him talking about he found Geneva and finally got an interview with her by using italics. Then it goes directly into her own voice and she tells her own story. Where as in Donald's story it is Isay telling Donald's story for him. When Donald's voice is used it is put into quotations.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-09-02/features/8703060695_1_self-help-american-psychologist-american-demographics