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.