My grandmother and I have never been as close as we both would like, and I believe that this was due to the distance between our homes fro so many years. She has always lived up north and I lived in the south, up until three years ago when my family moved here to Crawfordsville.
My grandmother is a wonderful woman! She is very well educated and she is always up for helping others before herself. She had to have that quality in order to be the boss to many nurses at a hospital in Chicago. My grandmother was great at her job and still would be! She got all the nurses what they needed when they needed it! She was the perfect boss!
Many years ago my grandmother retired from her career as a nurse. However, she never left the “boss” side of her at the hospital. She has carried that with her and will continue to do so until the day she dies. That has been the big problem between us for so long. We argue about so many things from the type of milk I drink to the type of vegetables I don’t eat. I have never opened up to her when we were disagreeing and fully told her how I feel. I usually just bite my tongue and walk away. But this time was different; I couldn’t do that during this argument. Maybe it was the pregnancy, maybe not, but whatever it was my feelings came out and I made sure she knew exactly how I felt!
This disagreement we had was about my baby shower coming up next month. She wanted to help with the shower because according to her, the mom-to-be is not supposed to do it. I didn’t care though; I began to plan it months ago only because if I did it I knew it would get done. We got together one day to discuss all the plans I had already made, from the games, to the decorations and the food. Now I think I should tell you that when my grandmother wants to plan something, or have people over, no matter what the occasion she always has to be in charge and do it all herself the way she wants it done.
So back to the day we got together and began discussing my plans. I started with the games and she agreed. “Wow.” I thought, “This may actually be easier than I thought.” I should’ve known because once I mentioned my cake and the fact that I was purchasing it that must have turned her stomach because she blew up and said “I’m not paying that much for a cake when I can get one made for free.” Well we argued for a bit back and forth and I finally told her that the cake was not getting any changes because that is how I wanted it.
That was the first time I had ever opened up and talked to my grandmother that way. I have too much respect for my family to talk to any of them that way, but I don’t know what it was about this time I guess I just couldn’t take the fact that she wanted to take over and change everything. I regret talking to her like that, I feel really bad and I understand that the way she thinks and does things are different and not everyone likes it but we all must deal with it because she is family and we all love her. I have dealt with her being the way she is and I will continue to do so, out of respect and the fact that she is family.
I’m still not sure why I blew up like that and I know it was silly, especially over a cake, but that was the only thing that I spent a lot of time on. I looked for the perfect cake and when I found it, I knew it. We still have a lot of things to do for my baby shower and not much time. One thing that’s marked off the list is the cake because I finally got her to agree to let me take care of it. I knew I would get at least one thing I wanted!
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
blog 3
Disagreeing with someone that you know very well and respect is really hard mentally and emotionally. You have to think about how your argument is going to sound to them, and you have to be careful not to offend them. The one person that I respect more than anyone else in the world is my father. He has been there for me through everything. He has always been the one I call up if I ever have a problem. There is one thing that he and I have not been able to see eye to eye on; who should be president. I hadn’t realized how much we disagreed until recently, when Barak Obama and John McCain were nominated to run for presidency. I do share a lot of the same feelings towards certain issues. We both believe that the government should butt out of peoples personal lives, lower taxes, and better health care. Unfortunately, I think that Obama will help us achieve some of these goals, and he thinks McCain will achieve these goals.
I think a lot of how my father feels about Obama has a lot to do with the fact that Obama has a Muslim background, and he is half African American. My father was raised in an era where African Americans weren’t treated equally, they still aren’t treated as equally as they should, and I think he does have more prejudice feelings towards them then he lets on. I know for a fact that he doesn’t like Mexican Americans; mostly because he was fired and replaced with Mexican Americans. A lot of this can lead to the resentful feelings that he seems to have towards people of different races; and I think that is why he is voting for McCain. Whenever we talk about the presidency and who we think should win; he completely shuts down and says that Obama is a terrorist and that he loves this country being a democracy and doesn’t want it to become a communist country. My father completely shuts off when it we talk about the presidential candidates. So it makes it hard to even try and discuss the election.
I think a lot of how my father feels about Obama has a lot to do with the fact that Obama has a Muslim background, and he is half African American. My father was raised in an era where African Americans weren’t treated equally, they still aren’t treated as equally as they should, and I think he does have more prejudice feelings towards them then he lets on. I know for a fact that he doesn’t like Mexican Americans; mostly because he was fired and replaced with Mexican Americans. A lot of this can lead to the resentful feelings that he seems to have towards people of different races; and I think that is why he is voting for McCain. Whenever we talk about the presidency and who we think should win; he completely shuts down and says that Obama is a terrorist and that he loves this country being a democracy and doesn’t want it to become a communist country. My father completely shuts off when it we talk about the presidential candidates. So it makes it hard to even try and discuss the election.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Blog 2- A Convenient Enough Truth
The leading documentary of global warming called, An Inconvenient Truth, seems to be changing the opinions of everyone concerning global warming. The documentary is actually based around former Vice President, Al Gore’s speech. When I think of Al Gore, I think of all the horrible things my parents said about him. I grew up in a conservative, very Republican household. Where bill Clinton and anyone affiliated with him were considered evil; So Al Gore was just someone else who got criticized a lot in my household. Even when he was running for president against George W. Bush, I was rooting for Bush. How naïve was I? The economy is falling apart; we are in a war that should have never been started; and gas prices are so much now that I can’t drive around to get to school. Bush hasn’t even tried to approach the global warming crisis at hand, but now I know that Gore would’ve.
Thinking back to when I first heard about global warming; I think of a huge man who had this enormous, booming voice that you could hear from down the stairs, and into the cafeteria. My ninth grade biology teacher tried to get us aware of the fact that it was a major problem that needed to be dealt with. He told us how the greenhouse gases worked and how it would affect us. After school that day I went and talked to my mother about this whole new concept, and she agreed with him. Since then I have been aware of the global warming crisis and hoped that scientists and the people in charge, aka the government, would do something to fix it. Unfortunately nothing has happened to help. Now after I graduate, this movie comes out. Al Gore, someone I was taught to despise, is talking about something that I really care about. So I watch the movie, and I am blown away. Al Gore is talking sense. How can this be? Sure he talks about himself a lot, and he get annoying after awhile; but I really soak in his message. I learned a lot from all the facts that he gave to everyone in the documentary. I didn’t know that so many things were happening around the world showing signs of this catastrophe. I will admit something to all of you that read this; I am a tree-hugging, animal loving, wannabe hippy. so as I watch, I learn that more and more animals are becoming extinct; polar bears have been found to have drowned because they can’t find thick enough ice to lay on; pine trees are being ravaged by pine beetles that were once killed off because of the winter months, but no longer are because of rising temperatures; and that the glaciers in the Himalayas are receding so much that they are not longer giving the water needed for some people to survive. This totally boggles my mind that the United States of America, the wannabe world police/saviors; we’re not doing our part to help. We are also the only country in the world that has signed the Kyoto Protocol treaty but we are the only ones that have denied ratifying it.
How does this all tie into Al Gore? He informed me of important lessons to learn; not only for myself, but for my own children as well. So now I am left regretting one thing I thought I would never do; I now wish that we could go back in time and stop war-mongering George W. Bush from winning the presidency. I wish Al Gore had won; maybe he would have made things better. Maybe, maybe not. Who knows for sure? I do know one thing now; I can’t keep wishing for change. If I want something to change; I have to do something that brings about that change. It all starts with one little step into the inconvenient truth.
Thinking back to when I first heard about global warming; I think of a huge man who had this enormous, booming voice that you could hear from down the stairs, and into the cafeteria. My ninth grade biology teacher tried to get us aware of the fact that it was a major problem that needed to be dealt with. He told us how the greenhouse gases worked and how it would affect us. After school that day I went and talked to my mother about this whole new concept, and she agreed with him. Since then I have been aware of the global warming crisis and hoped that scientists and the people in charge, aka the government, would do something to fix it. Unfortunately nothing has happened to help. Now after I graduate, this movie comes out. Al Gore, someone I was taught to despise, is talking about something that I really care about. So I watch the movie, and I am blown away. Al Gore is talking sense. How can this be? Sure he talks about himself a lot, and he get annoying after awhile; but I really soak in his message. I learned a lot from all the facts that he gave to everyone in the documentary. I didn’t know that so many things were happening around the world showing signs of this catastrophe. I will admit something to all of you that read this; I am a tree-hugging, animal loving, wannabe hippy. so as I watch, I learn that more and more animals are becoming extinct; polar bears have been found to have drowned because they can’t find thick enough ice to lay on; pine trees are being ravaged by pine beetles that were once killed off because of the winter months, but no longer are because of rising temperatures; and that the glaciers in the Himalayas are receding so much that they are not longer giving the water needed for some people to survive. This totally boggles my mind that the United States of America, the wannabe world police/saviors; we’re not doing our part to help. We are also the only country in the world that has signed the Kyoto Protocol treaty but we are the only ones that have denied ratifying it.
How does this all tie into Al Gore? He informed me of important lessons to learn; not only for myself, but for my own children as well. So now I am left regretting one thing I thought I would never do; I now wish that we could go back in time and stop war-mongering George W. Bush from winning the presidency. I wish Al Gore had won; maybe he would have made things better. Maybe, maybe not. Who knows for sure? I do know one thing now; I can’t keep wishing for change. If I want something to change; I have to do something that brings about that change. It all starts with one little step into the inconvenient truth.
blog 2
Today is September seventeenth two thousand and eight, we just got done watching a movie in English class, and the movie is called “An Inconvenient Truth” . What the movie is called really isn’t important it is what the movie or I guess you can call it a documentary is what it entails. The opening scene is of a beautiful stream that could be right in your backyard that’s how common it is. I guess that really isn’t important either. What really is important is Al Gore opening statement he makes to this entire room of people. He says “It isn’t isn’t what we don’t know that gets us into trouble, it is what we know” which struck me as odd. I think here is a former Vice-President of the United States of America the most powerful country in the world telling me that our knowledge will get us into trouble. I find that troubling in itself, I’ve always thought that knowledge was power, the more I knew the better I would be for my family and the better a life I would have for the future, now I’m just not so sure anymore, and here is why.
What is Global Warming? That is a common question these days in the classroom, and to many people it has different meaning, most know the same facts but it means different things to people. Some think it is just a government conspiracy while others see it as a real threat. What does it mean to you? To me Global Warming is a bigger problem then I ever thought it to be, I mean I knew it was a very bad thing that the people of today’s world were trying to fix but never did I see it to be this big of a problem. Just a little fact that I’m sure everyone already know what it never hurts to hear more then once, you know that co2 makes the ozone thicker correct? Well I bet you didn’t know that because of the admissions of our cars and trucks the co2 levels are going up and up they are actually almost off a chart that we have used since 1970, or the start of this becoming a big problem, and due to that the ice caps are melting, I know you’ve already heard that, but it is true. The western ice shelf in Antarctica is supposed to be one of the largest in the world yet it is slowly becoming smaller, and it keeps breaking off into the waters of the ocean. We can’t afford to have all that ice that is stored down there to melt and drain into the ocean, that will cause ocean levels to rise more then 25 feet, that is over half the cost of Florida and San Francisco, yah that will not be there anymore it will be under water, not to mention New Orland’s which already has most of its city under sea level.
We keep having worse hurricanes then the year before last, have you ever stopped to think why? I know our scientist have, they knew how bad the storms will get, and they told us what the damages would be. The storms keep getting stronger because the oceans are becoming warmer, they are getting that way because the suns uv rays are going right into the water instead of reflecting off and back into space, thus causing the water temperatures to rise. In India the summer of 2005 was the hottest summer that they had ever had in recorded time it was 122’F that was also for a period of days, and that was the average, not just the day. Which wasn’t even that past two years, I would like to know what the record is now?
I guess what I’m trying to say is something needs to change, we have the technology to make the world a better, more efficient place, why aren’t we? Also if we are one of the smartest nations why are we the biggest contributor to this problem we emit over 30.3% of the earth’s co2 levels and we don’t even have the biggest population. They say that old habits and old technology isn’t a bad thing, but what happens when you have new technology and you are still fighting old habits? We should all do something to help the planet, and I’m not a tree hugger but this is home, we only have one planet people. So what will you do? Are you going to change. Here is a website that you should check out if you care at all about the place you live, willyoujoinus.com . If you believe in pray, pray that people find the strength to change.
What is Global Warming? That is a common question these days in the classroom, and to many people it has different meaning, most know the same facts but it means different things to people. Some think it is just a government conspiracy while others see it as a real threat. What does it mean to you? To me Global Warming is a bigger problem then I ever thought it to be, I mean I knew it was a very bad thing that the people of today’s world were trying to fix but never did I see it to be this big of a problem. Just a little fact that I’m sure everyone already know what it never hurts to hear more then once, you know that co2 makes the ozone thicker correct? Well I bet you didn’t know that because of the admissions of our cars and trucks the co2 levels are going up and up they are actually almost off a chart that we have used since 1970, or the start of this becoming a big problem, and due to that the ice caps are melting, I know you’ve already heard that, but it is true. The western ice shelf in Antarctica is supposed to be one of the largest in the world yet it is slowly becoming smaller, and it keeps breaking off into the waters of the ocean. We can’t afford to have all that ice that is stored down there to melt and drain into the ocean, that will cause ocean levels to rise more then 25 feet, that is over half the cost of Florida and San Francisco, yah that will not be there anymore it will be under water, not to mention New Orland’s which already has most of its city under sea level.
We keep having worse hurricanes then the year before last, have you ever stopped to think why? I know our scientist have, they knew how bad the storms will get, and they told us what the damages would be. The storms keep getting stronger because the oceans are becoming warmer, they are getting that way because the suns uv rays are going right into the water instead of reflecting off and back into space, thus causing the water temperatures to rise. In India the summer of 2005 was the hottest summer that they had ever had in recorded time it was 122’F that was also for a period of days, and that was the average, not just the day. Which wasn’t even that past two years, I would like to know what the record is now?
I guess what I’m trying to say is something needs to change, we have the technology to make the world a better, more efficient place, why aren’t we? Also if we are one of the smartest nations why are we the biggest contributor to this problem we emit over 30.3% of the earth’s co2 levels and we don’t even have the biggest population. They say that old habits and old technology isn’t a bad thing, but what happens when you have new technology and you are still fighting old habits? We should all do something to help the planet, and I’m not a tree hugger but this is home, we only have one planet people. So what will you do? Are you going to change. Here is a website that you should check out if you care at all about the place you live, willyoujoinus.com . If you believe in pray, pray that people find the strength to change.
An Inconvenient Truth
To be honest, before watching “The Inconvininent Truth” I did not know very much about global warming. If someone came up and asked me what I thought about global warming, I would probably have nothing to say about it. After watching this documentary, it has really opened my eyes to global warming. I can now see how big of an issue it is in our world. It is actually very scary to me. It just makes me wonder if most everyone just ignores this issue, what is going to happen to the world? It makes me wonder throughout my lifetime what is going to happen? Not to mention if someday I have kids what are they going to go through?
One of the points that he brought up really sticks out in my mind. He was saying that polar bears have been found dead. Some of the polar bears have been drowning because they have had to swim so far that they could not make it. That is very sad to me. So much ice is melting that they are having to swim a lot more. Does this mean that one day polar bears are going to be extinct? From the sounds of it yes. The sad thing is that it’s not just polar bears that rely on the ice and the cold weather. Many other animals need the ice. If the glaciers are melting everyday, then eventually we will have no glaciers on our earth. I can’t imagine the earth without any glaciers.
He also said that we have had more natural disasters that have been caused by gloabal warming. When the water temperature gets warmer the storms get worse. The water temperature is rising so does this mean the huricanes and other storms are just going to continure to get worse? I can’t even imagine the weather getting much worse than what it is now. The hurricanes in the past few years have wiped whole cities out. If they keep getting worse I can not even imagine the tradgedies that are going to occur.
He also said that the ten hottest years occurred during the last fourteen years. He said that 200 cities in the west hit all time record highs. I don’t know what people are going to do if it gets much hotter than what it has been. If it gets much hotter there are going to be more droughts and possibly more wildfires in the west.
It just seems like our country is worried about so many other issues that this one is overlooked. I guess I was guilty of this too. I just wish everyone could watch this movie and realize how big of a deal this really is. This really scares me.
I think that there needs to be more awareness on global warming. Before I watched this documentary I did not think that global warming was that big of a deal. Now I realize if something is not done about this issue, its going to continue to just keep getting worse. I would encourage anybody that I know to watch this movie. It is a very serious issue that people need to know about. If everyone could come together and work against global warming we could put a stop to it.
One of the points that he brought up really sticks out in my mind. He was saying that polar bears have been found dead. Some of the polar bears have been drowning because they have had to swim so far that they could not make it. That is very sad to me. So much ice is melting that they are having to swim a lot more. Does this mean that one day polar bears are going to be extinct? From the sounds of it yes. The sad thing is that it’s not just polar bears that rely on the ice and the cold weather. Many other animals need the ice. If the glaciers are melting everyday, then eventually we will have no glaciers on our earth. I can’t imagine the earth without any glaciers.
He also said that we have had more natural disasters that have been caused by gloabal warming. When the water temperature gets warmer the storms get worse. The water temperature is rising so does this mean the huricanes and other storms are just going to continure to get worse? I can’t even imagine the weather getting much worse than what it is now. The hurricanes in the past few years have wiped whole cities out. If they keep getting worse I can not even imagine the tradgedies that are going to occur.
He also said that the ten hottest years occurred during the last fourteen years. He said that 200 cities in the west hit all time record highs. I don’t know what people are going to do if it gets much hotter than what it has been. If it gets much hotter there are going to be more droughts and possibly more wildfires in the west.
It just seems like our country is worried about so many other issues that this one is overlooked. I guess I was guilty of this too. I just wish everyone could watch this movie and realize how big of a deal this really is. This really scares me.
I think that there needs to be more awareness on global warming. Before I watched this documentary I did not think that global warming was that big of a deal. Now I realize if something is not done about this issue, its going to continue to just keep getting worse. I would encourage anybody that I know to watch this movie. It is a very serious issue that people need to know about. If everyone could come together and work against global warming we could put a stop to it.
Global Warming- "An Inconvenient Truth"
Global Warming is something that every person is required to learn about or at the least be taught while in school. Personally, this never caught my attention; I always looked at Global Warming as something that will eventually go away or something that people would eventually forget about in 5-10 years. This is not the case; in fact the complete opposite has happened.
Al Gore, former year 2000 Vice-President of the U.S has made a movie called “An Inconvenient Truth”. This movie includes all about the effects that Global Warming has had and will continue to have here on Earth. Some things that have resulted from this, to me, are making absolutely no sense. It is not natural for the animals that have lived in and belong in warm or cold climates to move closer to the north or south poles because their homes are too hot or too cold for them to survive in! Think about it! Polar Bears are dying because the distances they have to swim to get to “shore” are growing everyday. Gore also explained that due to Global Warming one country could be flooded and at the same time its’ neighboring country could be experiencing a drought. The only thing I could think of was how this is physically possible.
Watching this movie really made me stop and think about the things that make global warming possible and also made me realize that the people who live on and call Earth “home” are the real reason for global warming. Deforestation (the cutting down of forests’) is one of the many things that are making Global Warming. When a single tree is cut down, carbon dioxide is released into the air causing the temperature to raise a fraction of a degree. However, cutting down a whole forest or two, results in a major change in temperature and the amount of carbon dioxide (not meant to be inhaled) in the air. If this movie was seen by at least ¼ of the amount of people here in the U.S and everyone did something like buy a vehicle with a higher MPG or something as so simple as to changing a regular light bulb over to a fluorescent bulb, a very large amount of carbon dioxide would be decreased.
Changing the filter on a furnace or air conditioner saves 350 pounds of carbon dioxide in one single year. - http://climatecrisis.net/takeaction/whatyoucando/ viewed: 9/17/2008
Al Gore, former year 2000 Vice-President of the U.S has made a movie called “An Inconvenient Truth”. This movie includes all about the effects that Global Warming has had and will continue to have here on Earth. Some things that have resulted from this, to me, are making absolutely no sense. It is not natural for the animals that have lived in and belong in warm or cold climates to move closer to the north or south poles because their homes are too hot or too cold for them to survive in! Think about it! Polar Bears are dying because the distances they have to swim to get to “shore” are growing everyday. Gore also explained that due to Global Warming one country could be flooded and at the same time its’ neighboring country could be experiencing a drought. The only thing I could think of was how this is physically possible.
Watching this movie really made me stop and think about the things that make global warming possible and also made me realize that the people who live on and call Earth “home” are the real reason for global warming. Deforestation (the cutting down of forests’) is one of the many things that are making Global Warming. When a single tree is cut down, carbon dioxide is released into the air causing the temperature to raise a fraction of a degree. However, cutting down a whole forest or two, results in a major change in temperature and the amount of carbon dioxide (not meant to be inhaled) in the air. If this movie was seen by at least ¼ of the amount of people here in the U.S and everyone did something like buy a vehicle with a higher MPG or something as so simple as to changing a regular light bulb over to a fluorescent bulb, a very large amount of carbon dioxide would be decreased.
Changing the filter on a furnace or air conditioner saves 350 pounds of carbon dioxide in one single year. - http://climatecrisis.net/takeaction/whatyoucando/ viewed: 9/17/2008
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Blog 1 Freedom -vs- Equality
There will always be a long standing conflict between those that have equality and those that have freedom. I personally think that freedom and equality are two things that can coexist, but not to the extremes that everyone would like them to be. There are conflicts that always arise between the two when you try to have them both. So you would have to ask yourself what is more important to you and then you would have to go from there. To really understand the conflict between them; you really have to look at the two extremes of both freedom and equality.
People that have all the freedom they need don’t have as much freedom as they think. Humans are animals and we do find ways of governing ourselves; even if it is through a fight to see who is a stronger person. By doing this they have unknowingly caused inequality within the group. The persons that end up in the governing body will have more power than those that are not. They might take more for themselves and their families, because they are the leader or part of the ones in power. If they don’t like someone in their group; they can have that person picked on, removed from the group, or just ignored within the group. This takes away from the equal treatment that everyone else had once shared.
Then you have the next extreme of everyone being equal; which is slightly impossible because someone will always be in power. As I said before, we are animals and we will find ways to govern ourselves. The best way to look at an extreme like this is to give you an example of this extreme; and the best examples that everyone knows are Russia and China. These people are “equal”, but they have no real freedoms. They are told how they are to run their lives, how many children to have, how much they are going to get to eat, etc. Having a government that tells you how to do all these things would be the only way to keep the equality that one would desire.
So now I am back to the beginning question; what happens? Usually there is a fight between the two groups. Both sides believe that their way of thinking is correct and that no one else is right. We have actually seen this conflict many times in our history and it won’t be our last. World War II is (sort of) an example of these two sides conflicting. Adolf Hitler wanted the world to be full of his Aryan, making everyone equal and the Allied powers were opposed to this and wanted freedoms. This is only one example of many. There is the Revolutionary War, Vietnam, the Crusades, and many numerous wars in Africa between the tribes. This is a conflict that usually has bloody ends because no one is willing to compromise. That is what happens when these two values, freedom and equality, collide.
People that have all the freedom they need don’t have as much freedom as they think. Humans are animals and we do find ways of governing ourselves; even if it is through a fight to see who is a stronger person. By doing this they have unknowingly caused inequality within the group. The persons that end up in the governing body will have more power than those that are not. They might take more for themselves and their families, because they are the leader or part of the ones in power. If they don’t like someone in their group; they can have that person picked on, removed from the group, or just ignored within the group. This takes away from the equal treatment that everyone else had once shared.
Then you have the next extreme of everyone being equal; which is slightly impossible because someone will always be in power. As I said before, we are animals and we will find ways to govern ourselves. The best way to look at an extreme like this is to give you an example of this extreme; and the best examples that everyone knows are Russia and China. These people are “equal”, but they have no real freedoms. They are told how they are to run their lives, how many children to have, how much they are going to get to eat, etc. Having a government that tells you how to do all these things would be the only way to keep the equality that one would desire.
So now I am back to the beginning question; what happens? Usually there is a fight between the two groups. Both sides believe that their way of thinking is correct and that no one else is right. We have actually seen this conflict many times in our history and it won’t be our last. World War II is (sort of) an example of these two sides conflicting. Adolf Hitler wanted the world to be full of his Aryan, making everyone equal and the Allied powers were opposed to this and wanted freedoms. This is only one example of many. There is the Revolutionary War, Vietnam, the Crusades, and many numerous wars in Africa between the tribes. This is a conflict that usually has bloody ends because no one is willing to compromise. That is what happens when these two values, freedom and equality, collide.
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