Wow, I can’t believe this English class is over, it really flew by! I left my first day scared to death, intimidated by the class assignments and a little afraid that I would totally fail. But the class was great, I really enjoyed the assignments. Even the blogging hasn’t been too bad! I guess sometimes you have to push through your fear to really see what something is all about. I just hope my next class is as enjoyable as English has been. But I probably will leave my first day there scared and intimidated as well. Going back to school is a lot harder than it sounds!
Humanities Proposal
For my humanities assignment I plan to analyze the song There Will Be A Day by Jeremy Camp. This is a song that speaks of hope for the day when all the negatives of this life pass away and “we see Jesus face to face” . Though this is an idea that raises controversy for some, many feel that this is the one truth that we can look to in a troubled world or a peaceful world. I plan to look at that truth and what makes one believe that it is truth.
Free Choice, Just Choose What We Say You Can
There is a woman and a thirteen year old boy with cancer on the run right now because rather than having traditional chemo his family chose to go with alternative treatments. So the court system got involved, called this medical neglect and ordered the boy into chemo treatments. Instead of making the court appearance the mother took her son and disappeared. Has a line been crossed when the government can force medical treatments for our children? Sure, it could be considered reasonable, this boy needs treatment and the doctors believe only traditional chemo will work, but people do have success with non-traditional treatments. Recently a five year old boy died having a simple laser tonsil surgery, should his mother be charged for signing him up for a surgery that killed him? We all know how bad for you McDonalds is, soon will you lose custody of your kids for neglecting their health and feeding them a Happy Meal? What about all the people that refuse immunizations for their kids because they feel they are bad for them, will the court step in and force them to do something they don’ believe is right?Freedom isn’t lost in a sweeping blow but by one little bit at a time. So when it comes to medical care and choices for our children what is reasonable? Some people die with chemo, some people die without chemo. One thing I know from experience is that no one knows going in what the outcome of battling cancer will be. No one wants to look back and say maybe we should have done this or that, but certainly to look back and say maybe that would’ve worked had we been allowed to make the choice, would be a frustrating place to be. This mother is acting not out malice but out of love and what she believes is best for her son. But is she wrong? Is it fair for someone else to decide right or wrong? And when it comes to protecting our children, look around, there are children everywhere whose parents are not making decisions out of love for their children. Children who are in danger in their own homes all the time. These situations don’t require second thoughts, these children need protection. Yet so many don’t get any help. So is it right that a boy in a loving home whose parents are doing something, just not what the majority support should be put in this situation? Freedom, such a delicate issue and so important to us all.
Just Ducky!
I could talk about rising gas prices, job losses everywhere or global warming but I won’t. Instead I am going to talk about a feel good, warm and fuzzy animal story, again. This time the animals really are fuzzy. A mother duck in Washington state hatched out a dozen ducklings on a ledge. A banker in the building could see them from his office window. He did a Google search about ducks and realized that the mother would head for water and the babies would jump to follow. So he spent a long time on the sidewalk below catching the baby ducklings as they leaped from the ledge. The mother duck waited beside him and kept her ducklings in a group as the man handed them over. Once all the ducklings were on the ground mama duck, ducklings and man headed for the river. As luck would have it, the town was having a parade along the mother duck’s route. She must have thought the whole town turned out to watch her lead her babies to water. The banker followed them to the river where they joyfully took their first swim. Who would have thought in tough economic times like these we would be able to call a banker a hero.
Ethnography
I did interviews for my ethnography on sibling relationships and was really surprised at the amount of emotion that my questions stirred. Without trying, I am afraid I opened up painful memories for the subjects. I suppose this is a common side effect of studying people’s lives. And it makes me somewhat uncomfortable to cause people emotional pain. Something I expected to be simply interesting turned into much more. It left a heavy, uncomfortable feeling in the air that I don’t like. I wonder how people who do this as a career deal with the effect they have on the subjects of the study.
Gone to the Dogs
Recently every news program has been showing footage of a dog protecting another dog that had been run over. It was great to see the loyalty that the dog showed to his hurt friend, who turned out to be his mother. He must have realized he was risking his life but he stood firm blocking traffic from further hurting his mom. When police arrived, he initially blocked them as well, showing very protective behavior. The police were able to get the injured dog to the vet, where it is recovering. The hero dog went home. Apparently the dogs had escaped and their owners found out by seeing the drama unfold on the news. I can’t help but think of the news stories I have heard about people walking by other people in distress and not lifting a hand to help. We could learn a lot from man’s best friend when it comes to loyalty and caring for others.
Miracle in Missouri
The recent story of the little boy in Arcadia Missouri who was missing in the woods for two days was amazing. He had apparently slipped out of the house without his parents noticing and thought he was heading to his grandmothers house. He got very lost and spent two days in the woods of Missouri wearing only a long sleeve t-shirt and a pull-up, which he lost early on and tennis shoes. Apparently there are both bears and mountain lions in the area not to mention poisonous snakes. The night temperatures were cold especially for one so lightly dressed. By day two of the search rescue crews were giving up hope of finding the boy alive. Since his pull-up and one tennis shoe were found on a trail close to a pond divers were brought in to search. However it was a volunteer searching an ATV trail three miles from the boys home that was the hero of the day. After seeing some stray dogs gathered around something he went over for a closer look and saw the form of the unmoving boy. Not sure if the child was alive, he said”Hey,bud!”. The child immediately sat up and smiled. When asked if he was ready to go home he responded “yeah.” Though covered in scratches and ticks he was not seriously injured. This story had a very happy ending. But yet I think it gives most parents cold chills to think of the many endings it could have had. Children can slip away so quickly, and the world is such a scary place. It is great to hear a happy ending to a lost child story, we hear so many tragic ones. If only every parent that hears these stories would take away something to better protect their children.
Green Frog Prince
What do Prince Charles, Prince William, Prince Harry, Harrison Ford, Robin Williams and a fat, green, animated frog all have in common? Saving the rainforests of course. Prince Charles is behind a new internet spot featuring all of the above mentioned well-known names plus some, hanging out with a big, fat frog and encouraging the world to save our rainforests. The Prince of Wales said the goal of the video is to “build an online community to call, from the bottom up, for urgent action to protect the rainforests, without which we will most certainly lose the battle against catastrophic climate change.” So if we weren’t motivated to save our planet before, certainly when the Prince of Wales is willing to do an internet video with a frog the need for our involvement should become clear. To view the video in its entirety and get ideas about how you can get involved go to http://www.rainforestSOS.org .We all like to talk about our rights, right to our religion, our opinion, our freedom to express ourselves or defend ourselves but without oxygen to breathe our rights don’t matter anymore.Our planet is dying, because our progress, our greed and our laziness has done it tremendous harm. Do we look at our children now and say, “Sorry we messed everything up for you guys, maybe before global warming kills us all, scientists will find another inhabitable planet”? It’s so funny that in so many classic alien movies the “bad” aliens have stripped their planets of all natural resources and then come to Earth to do the same, the reality is we earthlings have beat the aliens to that end. Here is an easy thing we can all do to help save rainforests, drink Tropicana orange juice and go online to enter a code and save 100 square foot of rainforest per carton. For more information check out tropicanarainforest.com . If you drink orange juice anyway why not help the environment while you are drinking? People have been talking about how important the rainforests are to our planets health since I was in elementary school (and let’s face it, that was a long time ago) but so little has been done about it, time really is running out.
Social Sciences Proposal
For assignment 2, I have chosen siblings as the topic of study. I will observe sibling relationships during youth and much later in life. I plan on conducting interviews with siblings with the goal of understanding love (or hate) between siblings. I will look at what early on events or situations effect sibling relations throughout life.
