Just for Lindsey

A long time ago I posted a picture of my wall. Since then I have updated it, and Lindsey wanted a picture. And I am Lindsey's slave.

Quintessential Coffee

With stores in all 50 states and in 38 countries outside the U.S., the Starbucks Coffee Company is something that we automatically think of when we think of coffee. Named after the first mate in Moby Dick, Starbucks can be found all over the place. Some people only go there occasionally, as a treat or something to sip while chatting with a friend, but some are regulars. The white cup with the watermelon-green, circular label is a familiar friend, a little way of greeting the day. But Starbucks isn’t only a coffee place, and we don’t love it only because it’s where we get our caffeine jolt. Starbucks is so much more than that. It is a chance for us to make a clear decision about what we want; it gives us the opportunity to be in control. The sense of identity and decisiveness that comes with ordering coffee at Starbucks is why you can find them in Honolulu, New York City, and Beijing. You are not handed the same cup of coffee as the guy in front of you, your order can be so specific to your every need that it is as if the person behind the counter got up that morning to make a coffee just for you. “Iced Decaf double venti Vanilla Non-fat no whip Latte!” “Tall caramel macchiato!” “Tall strawberry frappuchino with whipped cream!” “Grande decaf cappuccino!” When we walk into Starbucks, we do not feel like just any customer, but a special and important individual. The quintessential cup of Starbucks coffee can be found anywhere because anyone can find something there for them.

Literature 8 No. 5: Lexicographer

Being a New Critic was fun, but it was kind of exhausting and time-consuming, so I'm going back to lexicography.

Precipice - a situation of great peril
Bereft - to deprive and make desolate, esp. by death
Parsonage - the residence of a member of the clergy, as provided by the parish or church.
Bachelor’s Button - any of various plants with round flower heads, esp. the cornflower.
Exonerate - to clear, as of an accusation; free from guilt or blame; exculpate
Penitent - Feeling or expressing remorse for one's misdeeds or sins.
Pirogue - a native boat, esp. an American dugout
Papist - a Roman Catholic
Infirmities - a physical weakness or ailment
Hoary - gray or white with age
Egregious - extraordinary in some bad way; glaring; flagrant
Buttress - A structure, usually brick or stone, built against a wall for support or reinforcement
Novena - a devotion consisting of nine separate days of prayers or services.

Wall Art

Lately, I've been putting stuff up on my wall. Not like posters spread out around the room, just stuff covering the area above my bed. My bed is in the corner, with two huge windows on both walls. There's a small space between the corner and the edges of the windows. This is the area I'm covering. I wish I could put stuff on my ceiling, but it's that gross cottage cheese-y popcorn stuff. This is definately a work in progress.

I have a Japanese print of a cat (out of the picture) and above it is the lyrics to a song I like called "The Year of the Cat." I plan on lining the rest of that side of the wall with photographs. They'll probably all be pretty old since now I use a digital camera. Then there's the birthday cards. My friend and I have this tradition where on our birthdays, we make each other these cars made up out of index cards or some other kind of paper, with random thoughts and memories and quotes. That's what the index cards going down the wall on the far left are, and the larger colorful pieces of paper are last year's card. Then there's the magazine pictures. I've just been cutting out pictures I like. Some are celebrities, but most of them are just cool pictures. On Saturday I went to Passover party, which is just as boring as it sounds like it would be. I started looking at my friend's book of photographs by Annie Leibovitz.
I looked through the entire book and then went back to the beginning and looked at it again. I went home and looked at some of my pictures on my wall and realized that some of them were taken by her and I just hadn't realized it. She takes the most amazing pictures.

Passage Analysis

We had a Poisonwood Bible quiz where we were given passages from the book and we had to analyze them in a metaphorical way and in a literal way. Our assignment is to do that again, only picking a passage on our own.

"On the day of the hunt I came to know in the slick center of my bones this one thing: all animals kill to survive, and we are animals. The lion kills the baboon; the baboon kills fat grasshoppers. The elephant tears up the trees, dragging their precious roots from the dirt they love. The hungry antelope's shadow passes over the startled grass. And we, even if we had no meat or grass to gnaw, still boil our water to kill the invisible creatures that would like to kill us first." (347)

Adah says this when they are on the big hunt with the rest of the village. She is describing the attack of the animals, and how they, as humans, are also a part of this cycle. It is a metaphor for a lot of elements in the book. The Congo is under pressure from a lot of countries. Patrice Lumumba has been killed. The quote might indicate that the Congo might do some killing in order to survive. It's also a metaphor for what's going on within the Price family. The part about the elephant sounds a lot like Nathan dragging his wife and children out of their comfortable lives in Georgia. The whole thing is part of the theme of killing to survive, killing because it's all they know. Anatole said earlier, "If they bite you, they are trying to fix things in the only way they know." (308) These quotes both seem to point toward a bleak future for the Congo, full of fighting and loss of life.

SAT Practice Essay

People today do put too much emphasis on learning practical skills. They see their goals and will sometimes focus all of their energy into achieving those goals. In Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, there are two characters at opposite ends of this spectrum of learning only for practical purposes and learning just to learn. Nathan Price is a missionary, sent to the Congo to bring Christianity to the natives there. He tries everything he can think of, all with single-minded determination and the belief that he is doing the right thing. He is not interested in learning anything about the place he is imposing himself upon, only in changing their ways. Brother Fowles is the missionary that was there before Nathan. Although he has the same mission, he looks beyond his goal of Christianizing the natives, and instead focuses most of his energy on his surroundings. He learns everything he can about the birds, plants, and people in the African village that he inhabits. Not only does his approach gain a lot more followers than Nathan’s, he also has a much more self-fulfilling experience than Nathan does. He leaves the Congo with new knowledge and understanding of the world he lives in. All the knowledge that Nathan gains has to do with his failed attempts at baptizing the villagers.
It can be easy to get caught up in the state of mind that Nathan Price does in The Poisonwood Bible. A goal is set and knowledge is gained for the purpose of achieving that goal. Learning for learning’s sake can answer questions we didn’t realize we had or provoke new ones within us. If people did not think beyond practical skills, nothing new would ever be discovered. Learning for learning’s sake can give us a better understanding of the world we live in and it often helps us with the practical purposes too. Brother Fowles’s knowledge of the forest and the people gained him their respect, although he didn’t intend for it to. This, therefore, helped him in achieving his goal of spreading Christianity because the villagers were more willing to listen to him.
People put too much emphasis on practical knowledge and skills. While these things are important, learning beyond what we need to is also important to gain depper understanding of the world around us.

Spring Break

This spring break I did kind of a lot of reading. In addition to Judges in the Poisonwood Bible, I read:
- Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
- Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
- Dry by Augusten Burroughs
- Shopgirl by Steve Martin

I also started a bunch of other books. I had a lot of time on my hands. Now I’m kind of an Augusten Burroughs freak, and I was always a David Sedaris freak. They both write memoirs. Augusten Burroughs’s are a bit more depressing, whereas David Sedaris’s are more humorous. This made me start thinking about all the people they are writing about. Usually, writing a memoir about someone, especially these kinds of memoirs, usually means that they are particularly laughable. Even if you change the names and places, these people definitely know that they are being made fun of. Even the people who look the best in them are usually called fat or stupid or something, and people tend to pick out the bad things against the good ones. I guess picking that kind of a career can mean offending a whole slough of people on your way to fame.

I recorded a show on my DVR called October Road. It’s a new show on ABC, and I recorded it because the girl from That 70’s show is in it. The point is, it’s exactly about what I’ve been thinking about. This guy leaves his hometown and writes about all his friends back home and makes most of them look bad, and ten years later he comes back. A lot of people hate him because of what he said about them, and some people were offended because they weren’t in it at all.

Then I thought, maybe some of these people deserve it. Hey, if you’re going to call a guy a pickpocket and say he smells bad on the subway because you don’t realize he speaks English, maybe you deserve to have the world know what a prick you are. Maybe if you end up in rehab for being a creepy sex addict, you should be prepared to have millions of people know all about it.

Literature 8 No. 4: New Critic

For The Judges, I decided to be the New Critic. My job was to identify key passages. This was kind of exhausting because this was a long chapter and this book is like one gigantic Key Passage, especially when Orleanna is narrating. I would be here forever if I typed out the whole quotes, so I’m just going to give the page numbers.

“That was the last I would ever hear… good fortune.” (196)

This is Orleanna talking about Nathan. This is a significant quote because it gives us some reason why Nathan is the way he is. Orleanna explains about Nathan being drafted, and how much it changed him. This reassures us that Nathan is not just a psychotic at random; he has his reasons.

“I’d lost my wings… Kingdom.” (201)
This is at the end of Orleanna’s narrative where she talks about her history with Nathan. She relates herself to the Congo. “Poor Congo, barefoot bride of men who took her jewels and promised the Kingdom.” It’s significant because it helps us to understand Orleanna better. A lot of the passages I chose explain why characters are the way they are. It’s Catcher in the Rye all over again.

“He explains the difference… she is named Leah.” (209)
This is Adah talking about Nelson explaining the concept of names to her. This reminded me of the Woman Warrior and the No Name Woman. Names have a lot of significance in the Congo. This topic of names and the names that the girls are given by the villagers comes up again a lot throughout The Judges.

“Now our whole family… we hardly understood them.” (230)
At first, it can seem like the Prices are the perfect family, but quotes like these show that they are as far from perfect as can be. Leah is narrating this, talking about the dysfunction that seeps into the family when they are in the Congo.

“All my life… He has no inkling.” (244)
This is Leah talking about how she is starting to doubt how her father handles their situation. This is a huge turning point for Leah, and it goes back to what Orleanna says earlier about “The day does come, finally, when a daughter can walk away from a man such as that – if she’s lucky. His own ferocity turns over inside her and she turns away hard, never to speak to him again.” (191)

“If I die… But you won’t see me.” (273)
This is Ruth May talking about all the bad things she’s done. Earlier, Nelson gave her a nkisi, a little box that the people in Kilanga wear around their necks to make them disappear if they’re about to die. He tells her to think of a safe place, and her chosen place is to be the green mamba snake in the tree.

Mosquito Coast and Poisonwood Bible

In English we watched the movie the Mosquito Coast with Harrison Ford. We watched it because it related to The Poisonwood Bible.

I thought that the father in the movie is very similar to Nathan Price. They both have to defend what they believe in, although one believes in science and one believes in God. They both traveled to another country to try to civilize the people there, to change the way they are. In both cases, it ends up blowing up in their faces. I could also picture the mother in the movie as Orleanna Price. They are both kind of quiet. Both wives went along with their husbands’ antics in the beginning but showed their own opinions later in the story.

The children in the Mosquito Coast do not play as big a role in the story as the children in the Poisonwood Bible. The oldest son, Charlie, is the one telling the story in the movie, but the other three children do not have much of a role. In the Poisonwood Bible, all of the children tell the story and are an important part of the book. Similar to the mothers, the children follow their father in the beginning but eventually go against them.

The general storylines of both the Poisonwood Bible and the Mosquito Coast were very similar for the beginning, but we haven’t finished the book so I can’t speak for the rest of it.

Literature 8 No. 3: Character Analyst

Leah: In Revelations, Leah provides the most information about what’s going on around the family in the Congo. She talks about the scenery and the other villagers. She also sees everything from a very optimistic point of view. She says of their new home, “Oh it’s a heavenly paradise in the Congo and sometimes I want to live here forever (103).” She has a strong desire to please people, especially her father. Everyone else sees moving to the Congo as a bad thing, except Leah and Nathan, and Nathan never narrates, so Leah provides a unique view of the story.

Ruth May: Ruth May talks a lot about what the other family members are doing. She quotes her mother and father a lot. She is very matter-of-fact, and tends to believe whatever she hears. She is a little mischievous, getting into trouble by climbing trees and spying on people. She has a different kind of bias that the rest of them, because he hasn’t quite formed his own opinions yet. I think that because she is the youngest, people aren’t aware of her as much as they are of the others, so she picks up some interesting information here and there. She breaks her arm and goes to the doctor, and she overhears a conversation that she probably shouldn’t have.

Rachel: Rachel probably has the most negative view of all of them about their situation. She hates everything about Kilanga. She provides the opposite opinions of Leah. When she talks about their surroundings, it’s in a negative way. She is very self-centered and cares a lot about her appearance. She never really gets used to her life in the Congo.

Adah: Adah provides the most unique view of the story, a view twisted inside out and backwards. She has her own opinions more than any of the others do. If we didn’t know she was a Reverend’s daughter, it would be hard to tell. Like Ruth May, the others underestimate her. They forget she’s there a lot, and don’t notice when she leaves the house for long periods of time. When a lion supposedly ate her, the others all believed it even though she was sitting right on the porch.

Being Leah Price

At school we are reading The Poisonwood Bible, and we did an activity where we walked around campus for 20 minutes, seeing the campus through one of the character's eyes. My character is Leah Price.

Today we visited a school in Hawaii. It was amazing! God must have placed his blessings upon this place, because it seemed almost too perfect to be real. The ground was covered in lush, green grass, and trees and bushes sprouted out of the soil wherever you looked! I even recognized some of the plants from Kilanga. I saw the same scarlet ginger that grows behind our house, and rows of frangipani trees in front of a large, cream-colored building. I wanted so badly to talk to the boys and girls here, but I had about as much luck with that as I did back in the Congo. Here they don’t have that haunted look behind their eyes, those married eyes, but there is something else. It reminds me of Rachel, that imperious, slightly haughty expression. They don’t stare into our souls, but glance at us, and then turn back to each other, uninterested. At least here they wear real clothes. It was a relief to hear people speaking english again, but even here I heard words I didn't understand. My family quickly dispersed, all of us making our own way through this new, exotic world. Rachel had found a group of beautiful girls her own age, and sat on a green picnic table with them, flicking her white-blond hair over her shoulder. Ruth May had marched up to a group of large, intimidating-looking boys and appeared to be bossing them around. They looked at her amusedly, eyebrows raised. Mother sat quietly in the shade under a huge tree, eyes on her youngest child. Adah shuffled across a path, dragging her bad leg behind her and seeming to see everything at once. Father had gone up to the chapel. He pointed out to me the small cross on the side of the smooth, white building, and smiled in satisfaction as if he himself had put it there. I followed him for a while, but got distracted by the olive-green pond that it was sitting in. I wondered if there were alligators in it, like the river in Kilanga. I wish I knew the names of everything here, so that I could write them in my notebook, right next to the names of the plants and animals from Kilanga. Imagine, another Garden of Eden, clear across the world! I wandered along the paths, stopping in wide, open fields to spin around in circles, arms out wide. There couldn’t have been a single sinner in the place; it was so beautiful, just like a storybook. I could have stayed forever.

SAT Essay Analysis

In class we wrote a practice SAT essay. The topic was whether or not the media influences our culture and what we find important.

I definitely do not think that my essay is my best work. I don’t really work well under pressure and that’s something I can only improve by practice.
Something that I should have done was to take the first few minutes to outline what I was going to write. I was worried about the time limit so I just wanted to start writing. If I had taken a few minutes to just think, I could have some up with a better example. I also should keep my eye on the clock. When Mr. Watson announced that we had 3 minutes left, it was kind of a surprise to me.
For most essays, we are supposed to just pick a side. I didn’t know about this in-between business. It does make more sense, now that I think about it, to show the complexity of the issue, but I am also afraid that if I try to argue both sides I’ll just end up contradicting myself.
I learned that because these essay-readers who sit in a hotel room and decide our future read quite a lot of these, our essay needs to stand out. You can’t feed them the same stuff that they’ve read a million times. Next time we write a practice essay, I will
a) Not pick one side, but discuss the complexity of the issue and make a decision later,
b) Take some time to outline the essay,
c) brainstorm some good examples, and
d) use my example to make my point, but still discussing more sides of the issue, showing it’s complexity.

Literature 8 No. 2: Lexicographer

Crinolines - A coarse stiff fabric of cotton or horsehair used especially to line and stiffen hats and garments.

Phonograph - any sound-reproducing machine using records in the form of cylinders or discs.

Deluge - a great flood of water; inundation; flood.

Frangipani – a flower of a tropical American tree or shrub, Plumeria rubra, of the dogbane family, plumeria.

Stipend - a periodic payment, esp. a scholarship or fellowship allowance granted to a student.

Hyssop –


Putrefaction - the anaerobic decomposition of organic matter by bacteria and fungi that results in obnoxiously odorous products; rotting.

Semaphore - any of various devices for signaling by changing the position of a light, flag, etc.

Parable - a short allegorical story designed to illustrate or teach some truth, religious principle, or moral lesson.

Furlong - a unit of distance, equal to 220 yards (201 m) or 1/8 mile

Desultory – lacking in consistency, constancy, or visible order, disconnected; fitful

Mongoloid - resembling the Mongols.

Literature 8 No. 1: Lexicographer

• Contingency - dependence on chance or on the fulfillment of a condition; uncertainty; fortuitousness:
• Procure - to obtain or get by care, effort, or the use of special means
• Earbob - an earring or eardrop
• Commodes - a low cabinet or similar piece of furniture, often highly ornamental, containing drawers or shelves
• Sloop - a single-masted, fore-and-aft-rigged sailing vessel
• Despond - to be depressed by loss of hope, confidence, or courage
• Smote - o strike down, injure, or slay
• Vestige - a mark, trace, or visible evidence of something that is no longer present or in existence
• Edification - Intellectual, moral, or spiritual improvement; enlightenment.
• Gallimaufry - a hodgepodge; jumble; confused medley
• Paroxysm - any sudden, violent outburst; a fit of violent action or emotion

Reflection on Blogging

I think that using these blogs instead of writing specific assignments has helped explore the essential questions of sophomore English. It feels more like a diary entry, so I tend to talk about things that have happened to me in my daily life, like places I go or TV shows I watch. This especially makes me think about the question, "what type of world is this?"

There are downsides however. Sometimes the more casual feel is not such a good thing. THere's also the technical issue. My internet connection is always dying on me, making it impossible to post. The recording of my This I Believ was an absolute headache to post, and it turns out that it doesn't even work anyway, so I'll have to try and figure that out.

It's also different because now more people are reading what I write. While I don't particularly like this aspect of the blogs, I do like to read what my classmates are writing.

This I Believe

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I believe in smoothies, the harmonious blend of different flavors, creating something unique. Multiple flavors can be combined to make one taste. No two smoothies are alike, just as no two people are alike. Everyone has a mix of personality traits and life experiences that belong to no one else.
Once I combined some random fruits and juices and made what had to be the best smoothie I had ever made. Ecstatic, I wrote down these ingredients to use again. When I did try to re-create this smoothie, it tasted completely different that the original.
I believe that it is no one’s place to judge or make assumptions about other people. Sometimes the clothes people wear or the amount of time they spend playing video games bring up assumptions and prejudices about them.
Once I was at my friend’s house and her sister made a smoothie for me and some of my other friends. Once we had all taken a gulp of it, she announced proudly that one of the main ingredients was tofu. We immediately spat the mixture out, but once we forced ourselves to drink some more, we realized that it wasn’t that bad.
I believe in people, that they all have something different to offer the world, and that there is some good in all of them.

First, picture the forest.

This weekend I went to Waimea Falls Park. I hadn't been there in a long time and a lot has changed. They took away pretty much everything commercial about it. There used to be a tram that gave tours around the park, a playground, a cliffdiving show, and a small zoo. All of that is gone now, and it's basically just a wildlife park. It's quiet, so you can hear the birds and the leaves on the trees shifting around. At first it reminded me of the description of the forest in the beginning of The Poisonwood Bible. The trees covered in vines, the spider webs, even the place where the girls go for a swim. I half expected an okapi to wander out of the bushes.

After a while, though, I realized that it was completely different from the forest in The Poisonwood Bible. The forests at Waimea feel tranquil, controlled. Even though all the commercial stuff has been removed, it feels too perfect, almost deliberate. It doesn't fit the description "This forest eats itself and lives forever," which feels wild, savage, unpredictable.

SAT Practice Essay

In class we wrote a practice essay for the SATs. The topic was whether or not the media has an impact on out culture and what is important to us.

I think that the media does have a very big impact on our culture and values. A lot of people look to the media to tell them what is important. People look up to celebrities on television or in magazines and often let what these people say or do influence what they think. The unconscious reasoning behind this is that if it’s on TV or on the Internet, it must be true. People in the media, know exactly what they are doing when they send certain messages. If a few celebrities pick up a new fashion trend, it is thrown in our faces through TV and magazines. People who see this might start to follow the fashion trend themselves. Other people will see these people and follow, until it has spread everywhere.
Sometimes people are influenced in a good way through the media. Bono from the band U2 started a campaign called Product RED, where certain products, such as clothing or cell phones, sold at certain stores will benefit AIDS victims in Africa. Bono appeared on TV on some talk shows to talk about this, and the campaign shows countless celebrities wearing or using these products. Shortly after the campaign began, I started to see people walking around at school or on the street wearing these clothes or using these products. I myself have a Product RED t-shirt and bracelet from Gap. I gave a few of my friends these bracelets for Christmas. Part of my reason for buying these is definitely because I want to help AIDS victims, but it’s also true that I hadn’t donated any money to this cause before this. In this situation, the media introduced the information about these products, but it also motivated viewers to buy them by showing celebrities wearing them. Because of the impact of the media on our lives in this situation, I now see people wearing t-shirts from the Gap line all over the place.
The media, through television, movies, magazines, newspapers, and Internet, has a big impact on what we think is important and on many aspects of our culture.

Shui Xian (Narcissus)

Currently I am drying myself off with a towel because I am soaking wet. And fully clothed. I'll start from the beginning.

Today I went to Chinatown with my grandparents. It's Chinese New Year Weekend, but the festivites are already over. I bought a little gazebo-looking thing and a fisherman for my fish tank. We had dim sum in a restaurant callede Mei Sum, where my grandparents tried to force me to eat duck feet, singing that "you don't know what you're missing" song. Just as we were leaving, my grandma spotted some weird, shriveled brown things in a box outside a store. Once I read the sign, I realized they were narcissus roots. I didn't recognize them because they are usually shiny and white. These were a little ratty-looking, with the appearence of things that should have been bought a long time ago. Most people but these about a month before Chinese New Year so that they will have bloomed right on the holiday. These were the only ones we had seen in Chinatown today. On an impulse, I said "Let's grow them," so we bought three bulbs for a dollar each. Once we got home, my grandparents stayed for a few minutes to show me how to take off the outside layers. Once we hade cut off some of the shriveled stuff, they looked more like how they probably looked a month ago. I set them in a plastice container with some rocks from my yard with strict instructions to put them in full sunlight. They look like of pathetic at the moment, but I'm pretty proud of them.



Sometimes I get this overwhelming urge to rescue things. Like I want to buy the most sickly and pathetic-looking fish at the store so that I can take care of it and watch it get better. That's kind of how it was today. These roots were kind of gross-looking and they've been sitting outside in a box for more than a month, and that only made me want them more.

Anyway, back to the reason my jeans are soaked and I'm sneezing a lot.

After leaving my roots outside in their plastic container for a few hours, I decided to change the water. This is the kind of compulsion that comes with the rescuing thing. Like I'll feed that sad fish a lot more than normal and watch it carefully as it hovers uncertainly behind the plants for hours. So I turned on the hose to change the water outside, and I accidentaly dopped the hose on the ground. It have a nozzle on it, and of course it landed handle-down. A strong spray of water shot straight up and directly into my face because I was standing right over it. I screamed and started laughing, and ran away from it. Immediately I realized how dumb this was, because I'd eventually have to go back over to it to turn it off and get even more soaked. So I was standing there in front of my house, laughing at myself. A cat stretched out on the roof across the street, also laughing at me, I'm sure.

I went inside and thundered up the stairs, gasping out the story to my mom. She's used to me doing moronic things like this to myself and only handed me a towel and warned me not to drip on the floor.

My Backyard

In class we are reading The Poisonwood Bible. The book opens with a descriptive passage about a forest, and we were assigned to use a similar technique to describe a different place.

Imagine a world where the light is green, where the droopy branches of the tree drape over the ground in a canopy of hazy emerald, enveloping the air and space. It is perfectly still, and yet every surface shifts and writhes. There is only one tree, but its bottle-green leaves and wrinkly, lavender flowers seem to fill the entire triangle. The grass is wet, the sun reflecting off the tiny drops of dew resting on the blades. A muddy-brown lizard snakes its way through a pile of dead leaves, leaving behind a rustling sound. Jade green aloe plants sit next to the trunk, huddled against it as if for warmth. A forgotten lawnmower hides under the tree branches, next to the jagged brown fence. Not even the lizards remember why it's there. It's strangely out of place, and yet it looks comfortable there.A tattered white rope hangs down from one of the top branches, the only remains of a once-cherished tire swing. A chilly mist hangs in the air, as if it has just rained. This backyard is alive in every way, somewhat forgotten by humans and yet it flourishes without them.

AntiGravity

There was this show at Hawaii Theater this weekend calleed AntiGravity. It was a performance group, sort of circus-y. They were giving out tickets on the radio, which was how my dad heard about it. Some of the stunts they did were amazing, like with bungee cors and hoops suspended in the air.

Right before intermission, four guys were falling from a post about 20 ft. high and onto trampolines on either side, where they'd bounce back up to the post and jump off again or whatever. One of the guys hit the trampoline, and, instead of soaring back up to the post, he bounced the other direction and hit the floor. He lay curled up for about 30 seconds before some guys came out from backstage to see if he was alright. His body started jerking like he was convulsing. A few seconds late the act was over and the curtain went down. Meanwhile, the remaining three guys were continuing with the act, still grinning and bobbing their heads with the music and making rock-on signs with their hands. I think one guy looked down at him for like a second and went back to the act. I mean, I understand the whole "the show must go on" thing but I would definately have gone right down to try to help him. By the other performers not stopping their jumps and just ignoring the twitching guy on the floor, rather than smoothing the whole thing it over, I found it a lot more disturbing. How could they still be grinning like idiots while their friend may be dying? Even if it meant getting fired, I could not just keep pretending everything was okay.

We expected them at the end of the show to at least say over the loudspeaker, "By the way, that guy's going to be fine" or something, but they didn't say anything, just acted like the gaping hole in the formation of the guys in the finale was supposed to be there. I couldn't find anything about it on the internet or in the newspaper, so I still don't know what happened, whether or not I saw someone die last night.

LOST

Yes, it's another TV show post for me.

Lost just started again. One of the characters, Juliet, was doing some really important research at her work. Eventually, she was able to impregnate a male field mouse. Her boss found out she was stealing some of her samples and trying them out on her sister. Her research worked, and her sister got pregnant from the injections she was giving her. I couldn't decide if it was ethical for her to be taking these samples. One one hand, it was her research and she wanted to help her sister. On the other hand, her company was paying for the equipment and facilities she was using to make this scientific breakthrough. I think that if it was something life-threatening, like her sister was dying and she couldnt pay for treatment so Juliet stole it for her, that would be okay.

American Idol

I just watched American Idol. I haven’t watched since the second season because I never like the winners and the whole concept just annoys me, but occasionally I watch the auditions, with the ridiculous losers who actually think that they have a chance. My mom always says that they must have some kind of mental illness, but I’m not so sure. Some of them do, probably, but I think for the most part they think they’re good because that’s what others tell them. I mean, if I know someone who’s really bad at something, I usually tell him or her they’re good anyway because I don’t have the heart to tell them the truth. Once you hear something enough, you start to believe it. If these talentless people eventually believe the good feedback they get, are we, their flattering friends, responsible when they burst into tears on national television? What’s more important, honesty or protecting somebody’s feelings? Is it even our place to protect someone else’s feelings, to stop them from learning from their own life experiences? It’s really easy to say honesty is more important, but I definitely could not tell someone, “You suck, do NOT audition for American Idol.” Maybe in most situations, honesty is best, but because American Idol is so widely televised and the judges can be really harsh, stopping the lunatics dressed as Big Bird from singing Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” from humiliation might be worth watching their disappointed face as you tell them that maybe they should stay away from the entertainment industry.

3 This I Believe's

The first one I read was "My Husband Will Call Me Tomorrow" by Becky Herz

It was about a woman who gets through the day only by believing that her husband will call from where he is stationed in Iraq. She is raising their baby on her own and is very lonely and worried about her husband, but she manages to still have a positive outlook by hanging onto the belief that he will call the next day. She pulls herself through everyday routines: going shopping, feeding her dogs, going to work, all the while managing to do it with the belief that her husband will be safe, hanging on because if she does, he will call tomorrow.

Reading this essay, I felt so sad for her, but also very admiring. I think that most people in her position would not be able to handle it the way she does. It must be hard hanging onto the tiniest belief that her husband will call from Iraq. I would probably curl up in bed and eat junk food and be really depressed all the time if I was in her situation. It made me really hope that her husband will call, but more than that I hope that she will keep believing he will.


The second This I Believe I read was "Just Like Pastrami" by Lee Schulman.

The author talks about his childhood, when his parents bought a deli in Chicago. His father would always say that the meat was best if it was marbled, if all the flavors mixed together. His customers would complain if there was too much fat, and then say the meat was dry. He would answer that "without marbling, they'd never get what they wanted." The author then relates this metaphor to his life and his relationships with his students. he didn't want to get involved in their personal stories, until a 19 year old explained that she couldn't do the assignments because her husband had been killed in a car accident. He realized that he needed to be aware of their lives outside of class too.

I think that this essay makes a lot of sense. Sometimes it is easier to keep things separated, but in the end, things and people only make sense if you see the whole picture. Sometimes we make assumptions about people without really knowing them, and those assumptions are often wrong because we don't know the whole story. The metaphor of pastrami made sense with the author's message, which was that he believes that he must "work with the messy world of people, relationships and obligations in their full, rich complexity."


The third one I read was Baking by senses and memories, by Emily Smith

In this essay, the daughter talks about her childhood, just as the author of the previous essay did. She talks about baking with her Grandmother and her Grandmother's recipes. There are metaphors in the baking, like how she has learned to wait for hours for the dough to chill, which I think is a metaphor for patience in general. She also talks about how her mother always makes pecan pie, and although her pecan pie was different from her mother's both were good.

Something that interested me in this essay was when the author said, "I'm beginning to bake with my senses and my memory instead of with the recipe." It reminded me of something we learned in Asian about Taoism. The Taoists believed that in order to succeed, we need to reject the rules and names that society has given us and use our senses instead. The author uses baking as a connection to her past. She explains it at the end when she says, "I believe that as long as I keep baking, my grandmother hasn't really gone."

Billy Collins

This morning in the newspaper there was a little article about a poet, Billy Collins, who will be teaching and speaking at Iolani for a few days. One of his poems was in the article:


INTRODUCTION TO POETRY

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

— Billy Collins


I thought this was a really cool poem. It seems really simple and it's easy to read. It seems simple because it basically tells the reader not to try to dissect every letter of it, just appreciate it for what it is. I liked the imagery and it described poems in ways that you normally wouldn't think of, like feeling it's walls for a light switch or water skiing across the surface of it. I wonder who he's talking about when he says "them," and if he's referring to a specific poem or just poems in general. This poem has kind of a carefree feel, and its message is not to look too hard for the meaning of things.

More about the Water Buffalo movie

In Chinese class on Friday we watched the water buffalo movie. My teacher was really enthusiastic about it, and she appointed someone in the class to taking ideas for something we could do to raise money and buy a water buffalo. This year the Chinese classes sold bentos for the Children’s Village in Baojing, China. My Chinese teacher brought this up as she asked us - in Chinese, so I probably didn’t quite understand it all – that although she knows at Punahou we all do a lot of good deeds, in clubs and for community service, if we thought we could do one more. I’ll keep posting in my blogs as we get updates about this water buffalo thing.

8 Minute Movie

This 8 minute documentary was about Robert Thompson, who bought a water buffalo and gave it to a poor Chinese family. Water buffaloes are really valuble over there, because they are used for both farming and as a food source for up to half a year. The family consisted of four generations in four people: the great-grandmother, the grandmother, the father, and his daughter.

I really liked this video, and it got the message of helping people across in so many ways that The Singer Solution to World Poverty didn't. The message of The Singer Solution's message felt a lot like HEY, SELFISH PEOPLE, GIVE YOUR MONEY TO CHARITY. This movie also convinced and motivated the watcher/reader to help others, but it wasn't an accusation at all. When we donate money to charity, we don't really know where it goes. For some reason, I just can't picture the Chinese or Indian or African governments going door to door of the houses of poor families in their country and handing them wads of cash donated by Americans. Even though what they did with the water buffalo only helped one family, it really helped them. Also, helping people in the way they did with the water buffalo video has a lot more personal benefit than just calling some phone number and giving them your credit card number. Reading The Singer Solution didn't really make me want to go help people, but the video definately did. Seriously. Now I want to go water buffalo-shopping.

This video is a great example of what we humans are capable of if we want to be. Something as simple as buying a water buffalo for a family changed their lives forever. Juxtaposed with The Singer Solution to World Poverty showed the contrast between the two, though both were intended to inspire helping others. I know that I personally would rather change one family's life forever than to give the government of some country some of my money, maybe helping more peope but definately not as much.

Singer Solution to World Poverty

I think that this paper raises some good points but there are a lot of things that I don't agree with. Some of the accusations against both the people in the examples and the reader are unfair. A lot of it is true, like how we sometimes spend money on things we don't need, but some points in he paper are kind of unrealistic.
In the first example, with Dora, I definitely think it is unfair to say that it was her fault for giving the kid up for adoption. It's not like she knew what was going to happen. Of course, doing a little research first wouldn't have hurt, but the possible harm that could have befallen that child was unintentional. I think that Bob's story is different. When we donate money to a cause, we don't actually know what's happening to it. Bob knew exactly what would happen if he didn't pull the switch. It's hard to just give away money and believe that somewhere, a kid's life was saved. If I was Bob, I know I certainly wouldn't be able to enjoy my car knowing that I had it because someone's family was mourning for the loss of their child.
As I said, I agree with Singer when he said that we spend more money than we need to on things we don't need. Yes, we could buy the cheaper car and donate the saved money. But where do we stop? Maybe we shouldn't buy a car at all. Maybe he's suggesting we just stay home all the time and not go anywhere so that we never spend money on anything, because it would help other people. If we do donate $200 and it saves a child, the child next to it is still not saved. Are we responsible for that one’s life too? Eventually, it will come to the point where we should spend less money on food and skip meals because we will still live if we skip a meal, whereas some starving child in a third-world country will not. I’d like to know how often Mr. Singer goes out to nice dinners, or how much he really needed his car. Does he donate absolutely everything he has to spare to charity?
Singer’s excuse for his behavior is that he is a “utilitarian philosopher… that is, one who judges whether acts are right or wrong by their consequences.” I don’t think that it is anyone’s place to judge what is right and what is wrong. Anything could have a bad consequence, but that doesn’t mean the person who caused it is a terrible person. He seems to think that this is a noble profession, the judging of fellow human beings, but I disagree.
I agree with a lot of the main ideas in this paper, it’s just in the details where things don’t really work for me. I think it’s unfair to say that someone who goes on a nice vacation every once in a while is the same as someone who lets a child die on train tracks so that they can save their car. However, after all the things I disagreed with, this is a very persuasive paper, and if it convinced anyone to donate money to a worthy cause, I can only support it.