Blog Entry #1 - Jessica Kapovich

While writing It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music, Amanda Petrusich uses several of the steps needed for starting with inquiry. First, she uses a basic technique of observing. She notes phenomena or behaviors that puzzle her or challenge her beliefs and values. Petrusich started with this idea of Americana and then started asking questions of where did it originally come from. Now this is where her observations are coming in because she is going on the road trip so that she can physically observe where Americana originated from.

Another one of the steps she uses very well is asking issue-based questions so far throughout her first couple of chapters. Petrusich asks a lot of questions about this idea of Americana and where did it come from. The whole idea of asking issue-based questions is to try to put into words questions that will help you explore why things are the way they are. A perfect example of how Petrusich uses this technique is her inquiry for the book. She sets up the entirety of what her book is going to be about with her inquiry. The inquiry is a bunch of questions that she is looking to answer by going on a road trip.

Finally, the last technique that Petrusich uses is to being flexible in her thinking about the ideas of others. This entails that she has to be willing to exchange ideas and to revise her own opinions. Amanda does this quite well so far in her book because she has taken on this adventure of traveling around the country to get a sense of Americana, and in doing so she will encounter people and have to take their thoughts and opinions into count. Being flexible is the key word in this idea because it is important to have an open mind when researching/searching for answers to the questions you ponder. So far in the book she hasn't really talked to anyone to get their opinions but she has thought about what has happened in the past, in New Orleans and African Americans, and connected her thoughts or ideas with certain events that happened.