How Quickly We Forget...

Most people know where they are from. They can name off a country, a state, and a city. Most people also know where their ancestors came from. People are proud of where their ancestors lived. They may speak the language, follow customs, or visit. But they also know they are American. They know that their ancestors left their home country and immigrated to the United States. People understand their great-great-grandparents were just looking for a better life. These people have heard the trials and tribulations of the generations that came before them. These same people are also proud that their family had a hand in making America what it is. Our country was founded by people that left their home, everything they had ever known, to follow the promise of a better life. After all, America is the melting pot of cultures.

And we pride ourselves on that. Oh yes sir we do. We pride ourselves on the idea that anyone could have come to America in search of a better life. Potato famine got your country down? Come on over! Opressive government not giving you your rights? Hey ours was founded on the priciples of freedom and justice! Just hop on the next ship leaving for America and in a few short months, all the riches and opportunity of our country could be yours.

But is it still that way? Do we still welcome people who only want a better life with open arms? Or do we put up barbed wire fences and stick guards in towers with guns? The way Americans view immigration is interesting. On one hand we pride ourselves on our immigrant beinging. The stories of people coming to this country with only the clothes on their back and not even two pennies to rub together. On the other hand, it's a problem. People are immigrating to the U.S. illegally. But not everyone.

As most stories go, immigrants have always had it tough. They normally didn't speak the language, have very much money, or were very well educated. But in the stories America choses to remember, people always overcome those obstacles.  Now the same principles are true, except we have made immigrants the enemy. They are the people stealing the jobs we are too above to take. They are the people using the healthcare we can't afford to have. And they are the people, who a few generations ago, were just like us.

America is a great country, but we have a short memory. We find it so easy to forget where we were not too long ago. We need to remember one of the things we so pride ourselves on, and not forget that should still be possible for others.

Blog of the Week: The Things They Carried...

The first thing anybody ever told me about the Vietnam War was that it was bad. The second thing anybody every told me was that it was a tie. My grandmother told me the first thing I ever heard about Vietnam, and Red Forman from "That 70's Show" told me the second.

It took me a few years to really question my own perception of Vietnam. Who did we fight in Vietnam? Why did we fight? And if so many people were against the war, why did it take us so long to get out? Although I'm sure that everything my parents ever told me about Vietnam was deeply skewed by their far left politics, I'd like to believe that by age 17 I have come to my own understanding of Vietnam. Of course Vietnam began and ended long before I was ever thought of, which left me with a sense of disconnect to what really happened.

As sure as I am that my parents couldn't give me a completely unbias account of the Vietnam War, I was sure that the media couldn't either. They say that the winners write history, and there was no clear "winner" in Vietnam. Which of course meant that anyone could interpret the war how they pleased. Some truly beautiful works about such a horrific thing emmerged, and some truly bias things about the war have come out too. Some made the "bad guys" look worse, some were just a attempt to justify what those "bad guys" were doing, and some just told what they remembered.

Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried only reaffirmed what I knew about Vietnam. The things that happened, the way people felt about the draft, the tactics that were used, and the long-lasting trauma the soldiers live with. Any other book I've read that touched on Vietnam had one common theme: horror. The horror of what these soldiers saw, or what they were doing. Other texts focused on the soldier. Obviously having served in Vietnam, Tim O'Brien's main focuses were the same. However, O'Brien's take on the war pushed his book beyond the stereotypical war story. He made it connect for me.

I realized that Vietnam wasn't just history, but the things, and some of the problems, that occurred in Vietnam are still relevant in the wars we are fighting today. O'Brien might have been bias, but he was honest about it. He might have fabricated the stories in The Things They Carried, but he was upfront with why. This book was different for me. It was more than a war story. It made me think beyond why war was bad, or even why that war was bad. It made me realize just how many people were hurt in so many ways by such a horrific mistake.

Op-Ed...

Facebook Politicians Are Not Your Friends

This article talks mostly about the effect that Facebook, Youtube, and other Social sites have on politics.
The author starts out by saying that Youtube and Facebook have unmasked many a corrupt politician. Facebook and Twitter have also been very useful tools in recent elections. Rich also compares candidates in the upcoming election, and their use of social networks in reaching their audience. He also makes a striking case, that it makes the reader question how helpful the internet is in political campaigns.

Cochlear Implants and Boarding School...

Both the stories told in Sound and Fury and in Brainwashing and Boarding Schools: Undoing the Shameful Legacy were controversial ones, and people had/have passionate things to say about both. However, other than broad and general arguments, I don't believe that they have much in common. The idea of getting a cochlear implant, an artificial device to improve hearing, doesn't register on the same scale as boarding schools with the intend to brainwash the culture out of their students. Cochlear implants aren't permanent or government regulation like the boarding schools were. The actual implant doesn't force the recipient to loose their culture; the boarding schools did. The boarding schools would violate human rights, like privacy, and keep students away from their families. The Cochlear implant is just an option, and doesn't physically separate families. It may however put a wedge between them. The article mentioned that once the school children were returned to their families they had a hard time "fitting in". In the documentary, the deaf community not accepting people with Cochlear implants was a huge theme. Another issue raised by the father Peter, was that his daughter would loose  her ties to deaf culture. Many Native Americans did loose their ties to the deaf culture, unfortunately; they didn't have a choice. The biggest factor, at least for myself, is that the intent behind the boarding schools was malicious. They had a purpose, and that purpose was to strip these people of their culture and shape them into what the U.S. Government thought they should be. Cochlear implants were only created with the intent of helping make some people's lives easier. That makes all the difference.

(Fear Of)...

Cymophobia or Kymophobia: Fear of waves or wave like motions.

Waves are harmless.
I like waves.
I like swimming.
I have no problems with waves.
I think they are swell.

On the otherhand...
Things that move in a wave like motion scare the bejeezes out of me.
The give me the heebie jeebies like no other.
Octopi: I can't stand them.
Worms: Just fine with me if they aren't moving.
Tongues: I don't wanna see them.
Jellyfish: Yeah, they suck.
I can't even stand spirit fingers.
This may seem like a pretty easy phobia to control, and for the most part it is. I don't tend to come in contact with giant hords of Octopi on a daily basis. I tend to avoid digging around in the dirt for worms in the morning. People don't normally walk around wiggling their tongues or fingers, so for the most part I'm good. The problem is I don't like things that I know can move in a wave-like motion. Dead Octopi, Jellifish, Seaweed, and things a long those lines. They make me more uncomfortable than I am willing to admit. They make my skin crawl as only the creepiest of horror films can. My heartrate picks up just the slightest, and I get that feeling in the pit of my stomach that makes me sick. It's not anything that dicates my life, which is good and all, honestly though...
If I'm dreaming about something creeping in the night, its probably a piece of seaweed or a tongue.

Genre...

Activism is a very important, yet broad topic.

The genre that activists use to get their message across has a great influence on how their audience interprets what they are hearing/seeing. 

Posters:

With a total of 5 words, this poster leaves much up to the viewer. Hopefully the concept is fairly easy to grasp, but this is a huge limitation for the poster genre. The message is just there, which leaves everything open to interpretation and can be great, but may also leave some things misconstrued and leave some people with the wrong idea. This may be especially true if the poster uses satire.

Documentary:

Click Here For Movie Trailer/Info!

I'm sure that everyone reading this blog has heard of Michael Moore, and I'm hoping that all of you have seen at least one of his films, but even if you haven't he is an excellent example of a documentary with an activist theme. Although all of his movies use a bit of satire and a lot of fact, they do have one flaw. Movies can all be edited to skew quotes, stats, and other information in the way directors and editors want. However, Documentaries do an excellent job, and only if done correctly, of stating their argument, discrediting their opponent, and laying out their rebuttal all in one lovely VHS or DVD shaped package.

Song:

Click Here For Youtube Video!

Music is another way to reach the masses. Although you don't see too many "Top 40" songs around recycling or LGBT rights, it can be a great way to catch people's attention. Songs are catchy, they can be replayed over and over, and the have the potential to really influence people based on their emotions. Unfortunately the message can often be lost due in the musical aspect of it all. Songs are often vague, which can sometimes do more harm than it can help.

Writing Is Like...

Writing is like macaroni art. Writing can be simple, so can macaroni art. We start when we are young, and our end product is sloppy and unstructured. Writing can be complex, so can macaroni art (although I'm not sure if anyone has made a masterpiece out of macaroni art, but I'm sure it is possible). We can do it for the rest of our lives, and as we get older and practice the end result will be more beautiful and thought-out than before. It has been said that not enough people in modern society write, and one of my personal philosophies is that not enough people in modern society partake in macaroni art. However for the people that do write, so many say that writing is therapeutic and relaxing. Macaroni art can be the same. Sitting down, taking time, and finding little pieces of something(possibly some Penne or a thought you had about something a week ago), putting them together to make something bigger. Something better. Now some may think that comparing writing to macaroni art is a bit of a stretch, that I'm not taking this assignment seriously enough. But who said writing had to be serious? Can't it be just as fun and silly as let's say, macaroni art?

The Prevailing Opinion Of A Sexual Character Discussed...

The first thing I have to say about The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed is that it is quite intimidating, but I think Mary Wollstonecraft would have liked it that way.

Wollstonecraft was not writing as the average housewife of her time. She was writing as one of the highly educated philosophers with radical and new feminist ideas of her time. She was bold, she was insulting, and for the most part she was right. I am not going to say I didn't hate this essay because I did. I hated the length. I hated the vocabulary. I hated her repetitiveness. I hated her late 1700s English, but at the same time that was what made me love it.

So many men of Wollstonecraft's time wouldn't expect a piece of such length from a woman, it made me feel like just because she had the dedication to write A Vindication of the Rights of Woman she was, in a way, sticking it to those that thought so little of her sex. Not only did the challenging vocabulary help to complete my requirements for this class, but it was the sort of vocabulary that wasn't everywhere, or for that matter really anywhere, that I usually pooled my reading material from. While reading her essay, I kept wondering "why oh why" did she keep repeating the same things? After the first few pages, I could for the most part guess her views on female rights. Wollstonecraft's repetitious themes on women's education, where they should be in society, and how detrimental the way society viewed their sex only showed how passionately she viewed these issues. As for the late 18th century English, I really did just dislike that quite a bit.

Now I'm sure other AP Comp bloggers will touch on the obvious key points of Wollstonecraft's essay. They will mention the brilliance of her comparing female education to the education of military men, how she feels about a woman's main focus being to please her husband, and what has changed since this was written. These are all important, but there was however a paradox in this essay that still confuses me( and by any means if you can explain it to me, go right ahead), and I found that I couldn't enjoy the rest of the essay because of it.

Around page 14, I pieced together two things Wollstonecraft had said. She stated that marriages would be better, if women were their husbands companion and were on a closer intellectual level. Later she stated that women would be better mothers, and could spend more time educating their children, if they had bad marriages. So in my mind and using Wollstonecraft's logic, however you spin it, these women couldn't win. You would have to be an educated woman with an unhappy marriage to teach your children, especially daughters, that an education was important. Somehow going against the social norm, just to be unhappy doesn't seem like the best way to convince women that education is what they need.

Although the rest of her essay was brilliant and it made me appreciate where the start of the feminist movement came from, this one part completely threw me off to the point that it almost tainted the rest of this beautifully crafted piece.

 

Skunk Dreams...

When I first read this passage, I was a bit lost about what exactly the point of this essay was. I can remember agreeing with a majority of what Louise Erdrich had to say, but the style she used had me going "huh?" in between the "Ohhh yeah she's right!'s" The focus seemed scattered between the cruelty of Corbin's Park and it's hunting club, the 6th sense that dreams could be, or living life like a skunk (I at least understood that Erdrich meant to metaphorically live like a skunk, and she wasn't trying to persuade her readers to living in holes and attack enemies with their unbearable stink.) I looked up Erdrich and found that she is known for her poetry and short stories, which I tried to keep in mind when reading this. Still, I found it scattered and whatever her true message must have been was partially lost to me due to the fact that I just couldn't understand the main focus of her piece.

As for Erdrich's actual style, I'm still not sure how I feel about it. Her use of sensory imagery and vivid description gave so much to the piece, but at some points, especially when she was describing actually seeing the   fence for the first time, I felt like it wasn't as key to the point of the essay as the time she took to describe it.

What really resonated with me was the author's apparent joy in the outdoors. When I read this I was sitting outside a 4th century stone farmhouse in the French countryside. Reading about the Erdrich's pure love of nature truly made this article for me, and also helped me appreciate my surroundings.

Although I do have some praise for this article, I found that it gave me one too many mixed signals. However, through all the confusion Erdrich did sway my opinion on one thing...
If I had to be an animal, being a skunk wouldn't a half-bad choice.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?...

Is Google making us stupid? It might be, I don't think I'm exactly the best person to decide this, but I'm not sure Nicholas Carr is either. Although he has obvious talent as a writer and I very much enjoyed his style of writing, I couldn't help but rolling my eyes and possibly thinking that the guy was being a little over-dramatic.

One of the issues I had with Carr's essay was how he only referenced the problems he noted in people his own age. Carr never mentioned how Google, or even the internet in general, affected other generations that had always grown up with it.(Yes, I "Google'd" Nicholas Carr, trust me the irony isn't lost on me, and he is about 61 years old).

A quote in his article, by Bruce Friedman, went something like "I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print...I've lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it." And maybe I'm an exception or am just being stubborn, but I don't find myself facing this problem. However, I am growing up in a very different time. I believe in some ways Carr holds a very valid point, but I just wish he would have analyzed this aspect of this problem.

Carr's story about Friedrich Nietzsche brought much credibility to his article and was very interesting, but once again it was a story about a person who hadn't grown up with this technology and was just being introduced to it. It only made the article feel a little more one-sided. Just as Carr explaining Taylorism was interesting, it only made me feel like he was being a little over-dramatic.

About half-way through this essay a truly puzzling thought emerged in my mind. Which came first? The internet becoming such an intricate part of our lives due to our need for instant information, or our need for instant information because the internet has become so wide-spread. I have yet to figure this out in a way that agrees with my own judgement, but it was the most thought-provoked I was while reading this article.

Finally, when Carr interviewed Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, and Schmidt mentioned making Google into "an artificial intelligence, a HAL-like machine that might be connected directly to our brains." That was too far. Along with the 2001: A Space Odyssey references I started to loose faith in this article and began to believe Carr took it a bit too far. Although, as I mentioned this before, I found Carr's style extremely enjoyable. I did not find his take on the effects of the internet to the human brain as enjoyable.

I am sure I will get some flack for this, but I found Is Google Making Us Stupid? one-sided and not filling of its potential.

The Talk Of The Town...

When I first started reading Adam Gopnik's article, I wasn't quite sure what it was about. However as I continued reading, I became deeply drawn into his views and the way he expressed them. Gopnik's use of quotes, statistics, sarcasm, and shockingly obvious logic gives his piece the matter-of-fact tone that is needed to get the message through to readers.  It is nearly impossible to believe that any American could read this article and not take a stance on how the United States handles gun control.

Every few years we hear about a devastating shooting like Columbine or Virginia Tech. Every few years we mourn the losses those who didn't need to die. Every few years there are people on T.V. talking about the shooters mental illness. Unfortunately, every few years U.S. gun control laws aren't increased. We are not learning from our mistakes like Scotland or Canada, as Gopnik points out in his article.

Gopnik also touches on another serious issue. The heavy presence of the N.R.A., with its capitalist agenda and ideas that "every man has the right to bear arms" that dates back to the 1700s. He admits that there will always be a part of America that has a focus on hunting. That is perfectly acceptable, but Gopnik also notes "hunters need rifles and shotguns-- with proper licensing, we'll live with the risk. There is no reason that any private citizen in a democracy should own a handgun." He is right. You can't justify any average American citizen needing a handgun or a semi-automatic or anything that is really meant to kill anyone, if no other average American citizen has one either. A simple background check before purchase could solve so many problems. Gopnik points all of this out with great style and articulation. His article was more than a pleasure to read.

As for Susan Sontag's article, it was equally interesting although slightly more insulting. Not insulting to me, not insulting to the informed public, but a slight undertone of blame towards the leaders who kept this in the dark.
I did however find it quite refreshing that Sontag didn't just talk about what went wrong. When this article was written, America felt like a victim. And in some ways, America was. There was in fact, another part of the story that most Americas didn't know. Sontag's way of addressing what so many Americans didn't know after such a traumatic experience was perfect.

She was subtle when needed and harsh when expected. Just like Gopnik's I very much enjoyed reading it.

Pina Coladas And Getting Caught In The Rain...

Well this is my first blog entry, or I guess my introduction. I never thought I would be doing this. I always thought blogging was for hipsters or something, but I guess blogging is for AP Comp students too. I hope it's apparent that my name is Gabriela, and for those of you that don't know I'm going to be a Junior next year.

I really don't enjoy just straight up writing about myself, but here it goes. I love the environment, but sometimes I get a bit intense about it. I love music, but depending on the day it changes. I love running; I'm honestly not the same person when I don't run. I love being involved in drama. I love taking random trips to Brew&Grow or Dairy Queen with my friends. I love Jones. The sound of harmonicas is one of my favorite. I could eat Indian food every day of the week.I hate tongues. I have a terribly awful laugh. I use the word pants as a suffix. I want to travel the world. I don't have a TV at my house. If I use the word "I" to start one more of my sentences, I just might cry. But because I know anybody reading this is dying to know, Yes I do love Pina Coladas and getting caught in the rain!

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I might come off as a space cadet or uptight, but when it comes down to it. I'd much rather just go with the flow. I'm sure I've made myself sound like one of the least interesting people in the world. I'm also sure that I'll think of a million more clever things to say as soon as I post this, but that's okay. I think it'll be interesting to read what everybody has to say on these blogs, and by the end of the class I hope I'll be semi-fond of this whole blogging concept.