It's the most wonderful time of the year?

Happy holidays to y'all!
Every year around this time, people begin to get into the holiday spirit. They get all bundled up and go ice skating, go caroling, go to the CSO to see Welcome Yule, their annual christmas show (co-written and composed by my boss!), and enjoy what the city has to offer this time of year. Yet, this year seems different. All my friends who are usually the Cindy Lou-Hoo's of Christmas, seem to be distracted. A lot of it, sadly, comes down to too much work. This week is the week where all the teachers try and cram in all they can before the break and before the end of the semester and everyone just seems overwhelmed. In a recent post by DocOc, he talked about what schools provide for us and what we wish to get out of them besides a diploma and a nice Ivy League acceptance letter (or where ever you may wish to go). I think that through the constant drudge of busy work assignment after busy work assignment, we lose sight of that and whats important, at least I do. Although starting December off with listening to the Christmas station in my car (and subsequently turning it off when any Mariah Carey song came on), I have not gotten into the Christmas spirit because I just haven't had time. It takes a full day to watch Rudolph, trim the tree, and enjoy your time at home, but since I've been slammed with so much work before break, I haven't had time to breathe, let alone have a Christmas party!

So back to the big question:
What do I want to get out of my high school experience besides that acceptance letter?

Honestly, I want to know how to live, be well-rounded, and not obsess so much over the little things. Maybe high school isn't the place to learn those things, maybe I'll have time to watch Rudolph when I'm older and this is the time to work hard and maybe skip an eggnog or two (not like I drink it, cuz its just disgusting but I think the idea still holds) in order to get to the next level in this video game we call life. But I hope it's not, I hope I can find time to drink and undrink an eggnog and watch the old Christmas movies I love so much, and see A Christmas Carol at the Goodman Theatre, spend time with the people I love, and really get into the holiday spirit. Maybe.

Critical Viewing Revisted

A few months ago (wow have we really been in school that long?), I posted a blog about my trip to Kenosha (can be seen here) and about the eating habits of lower income families. Today, I was on a mission to make cookies for my best friend's family for Hanukkah and I realized we had NOTHING in our house to make cookies with, so I ventured to the store. Unfortunately, my family only had cash accessible today, much like many American families, so I had to shop on a very strict budget. While in the store, I got baking soda on sale for 99 cents, chocolate chips for $3 and brown sugar for $2. I was pretty excited that I found so many things on sale that I needed, but then I got to the dairy section. We were desperately in need of butter, not just for my cooking, but for veggies and everyday stuff. I had $6 left in my pocket and looked over my choices. To my dismay, I couldn't afford any of the butters offered. I had no idea what I would do because I really wanted to make these cookies and I didn't want to come back from my trip empty handed, so I looked over the rest of the section to see if there was anything I could get. I then see the Imperial Margarine box on sale for 99 cents. For those of you who don't know, margarine is filled with trans fats and partially hydrogenated oils and was created to be a butter substitute (more info on the history of margarine here). Being somewhat health conscious, I knew that margarine is not the healthiest choice, but I really needed something to bake with so I compared it with butter nutrition wise and I posted my findings below!

On the left is butter and the right is margarine. Margarine has double the calories and 2g of trans fats. This is obviously a lot less healthy, yet on my visit to the store it was 1/6 of the cost of the butter. Ultimately I took the margarine, knowing that I would be able to buy butter tomorrow, but what about the families who don't have that option? I really realized how much food really costs and how a family could, by simply trying to provide their family with necessities like butter, could be forced to use unhealthy substitutes because they don't have the funds to spend $6.34 for 4 sticks of butter.

What you don't know won't hurt you, what you don't show will kill you

This past holiday weekend I spent 2 hours watching one of the best animated feature films of all time, Beauty and the Beast. I've loved this movie for my whole life but after reading The Crucible, I saw one specific scene in a new light. When Belle returns from the Beast's castle to help her ailing father, a mob comes to their house to take her father to the "Asylum de Loons". Belle, trying to save her father, shows the mob the Beast on her magic mirror. When they see it they are immediately frightened and begin to head towards the beasts castle in attempts to loot and destroy the castle and all it's inhabitants, including the beast. As they head towards the castle the mob sings "if you're not with us you're against us". This lyric is almost an exact quote from Danforth in The Crucible where he says ""A person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between"(87). It puts people into a black and white catergory and polarizes those on the outside of the mob, like Belle and her Father. It also shows the closemindedness of a mob mentality, that if you don't agree with everything they mob believes, you're on the outside and theres something wrong with you because you don't fit in. Its interesting to see how so many people can get swept up in one mindset and how it snowballs into what happened in The Crucible with the hangings of "witches" and "wizards" and in Beauty and The Beast with the storming of the castle (but because it's Disney, everyone lived happily ever after).


PS- The title of this post are the lyrics from the Butch Walker song If (Jeannie's Song) off his album Left of Self-Centered. His website is on my "People Worth Following" tab, check him out.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secret Messages

Friday night I stood in line for 3 hours to see the 7:30 showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. These books were my childhood, me and my friends from 1st grade until 3rd grade pretended we were characters from Harry Potter every day during recess. So, I was clearly beyond excited (ask Emma, I was jumping up and down for a solid hour in line). When the movie finally started, I was struck by something. If you aren't familiar with the story line of the 7th book here's the Reader's Digest version. Harry and his friends are trying to fight the resurgent Death Eaters under the command of Lord Voldemort. The Death Eaters are attempting to kill all "muggles" (non-magic folk) and mixed blood wizards and witches. When first reading these stories, I thought of it as an allusion to the social order in England, where J.K. Rowling calls home. But while watching the movie, I saw something much more sinister at play.
In the scene where Harry, Ron, and Hermione use a polyjuice potion to pretend to be ministry workers when Harry is trying to sneak into Dolores Umbridge's office to find the horcrux Harry's Godfather's brother used to have. Outside her office sat hundreds of people (presumed mixed bloods) printing out propaganda that was pro pure blood wizards and witches. When I saw this I got chills. The propaganda they were spreading was almost the same sent out by the Nazi's in WWII against the Jews and for the Nazis. I realized the entire Second Wizarding War is a complete allusion to WWII and the Death Eaters and Voldemort are the Nazis while the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter are the U.S. and England.
This really threw me because I really had never seen it like that until now. Critical thinking I suppose, but my childhood book and life came into reality and I was definitely thrown for a loop. It's very interesting to see what movies and books you liked when you were a kid might be hinting to or about subliminally.

Parallels and Contrasts (sadly only one not three)

I was at a loss for what to post about today. I have spent the past few days off disconnected from reality really, I've hung with friends and watched Blue's Clues (See previous post) and thats about it, so I went to NPR and tried to find something current to talk about. I reach the main page and BAM! I am hit in the face with the most provocative header:

Out Of The Closet ... In The Pulpit Of A Megachurch

When I think of a Megachurch in the South my mind goes straight to what I saw in the movie Jesus Camp, a large community of people with the same, very conservative values. I also think about the Assembly of God church services I see on GMC on sunday mornings; a very passionate preacher who engages a very large audience with sometimes offensive statements about gay rights, other religions and faiths, and even hurricanes (see here for statements made by John Hagee, John McCain's pastor). So when I saw and subsequently read this article about Bishop Swelley coming out of the closet, I was shocked. He was very brave to come out in his position in his Church, but I got to thinking, where is the line between religion and your life? Personally, I am not a very religious person, so maybe this question could simply just come out of not having a certain religious text I believe in. Even though the Bible teaches that homosexuality is wrong (prime example being Genesis 19, the story of Sodom and Gomorra), Swelley was brave enough to come out of the closet and be open and honest with his church and maybe even change some minds about homosexuality. Swelley, like many others including myself, believes that homosexuals are born with their sexual orientation and that it is not a choice, contrasting with the views of many of his followers. This man has devoted his life to the words of the Bible, but disagrees with some of them because he knows he did not pick this life for himself. Where then, does he he draw the line between the bible and his life? If now he believes that the Bible is not always correct, where will he know where to follow the words of God and where he can stray from the path laid for him because he knows it is not right for him? Personally, I wouldn't quite know what to do. I guess you just gotta have faith.

These are a few of my favorite things

I got home from my athletic training meeting today and was at a complete loss as to what to do. I caught up on my most recent recorded episodes of my favorite shows (glee and gilmore girls), talked with my sister, and was about to get started on some homework so I could have the whole 4 days off to do what I please when I came across my old favorite tv show on my channel guide.



This show got me thinking about my other favorite things from when I was growing up, like the little disney figurines I played with, my legos, and my rock tumbler (yeah I was a cool kid). I thought of my old shows like Dinosaurs (best show ever by the way), Sesame Street, the Wonder Years (not exactly from the time I grew up but I watched it all the time when I was little), and Happy Days (again, from a while ago but I was a huge Fonz fan).

Anywho, this got me thinking about what kids growing up in the Massachusetts Bay Colony looked back on as their favorite things from their childhood. In class we looked at what was used to teach their ABC's, a very religiously biased alphabet story board type of thing. Personally, besides my parents and teachers using books, I learned my ABC's from Elmo which always gives me a warm fuzzy (and slightly red) feeling inside to have something cute to look back on while writing a paper... or a blog post. But what did these kids have to look back on? Personally, I don't get a warm fuzzy feeling from a strict schooling and a structured childhood. It really interesting to think about how differently everyone's childhood is. I was reading a site on children from around the world and seeing how each child celebrates holidays and spends their time. All the kids celebrate so many different things and each of their societies has different values but they all love playing ball and hanging out with their friends. I guess that no matter where children come from, they still enjoy the same things, if they're from the 1600's (i'm a 1790's girl myself ;]), the 90's, or from a small village in Kenya. Kids will be kids.

What do we really see

The Crucible is all about hysteria and false accusations, rumors and perception. I feel like it is a lot like high school. We all are guilty of gossiping, even unintentionally. We all make assumptions about people by how they dress and act in the hallways. We judge them on what rumors we hear about them from the past weekend at that one crazy party or who they're friends with. But are we all Mr. Putnam's at heart? 

I feel like sometimes, no matter who we try to be, a star athlete or a philanthropist, a leader or invisible, we can't help but make assumptions and judge people. We judge them based on the small part of them we see and take that as who they truly are. But in The Crucible where does this get the characters? Does it advance Mr. Putnam in his society to make assumptions, does it make him a better person? Does it make us any better to judge our peers based on their actions? I am as guilty of judging people as anyone, but I really don't know where it gets us. Maybe we just want to feel superior, maybe we don't want to be judge ourselves so we try and draw people's attention to others like Mr. Putnam, or maybe we just like putting people into categories, to keep our lives organized. Maybe its a smattering of all of those, I don't know. But what I do know is that when we spread our judgements, we could be starting our own witch hunts.

Does that have anything to do with...

The other day DocOc mentioned the famous George Orwell quote "Who controls the past, controls the future, who controls the present, controls the past" from the book 1984. Besides having previously read this book, the quote seemed very familiar. I got into my car after school to get over to swim practice and turned on the radio as I always do and the song Testify by Rage Against The Machine and the lyrics of the bridge of this song is the same Orwell quote we talked about in class! I began to think of how literature influences music and the connection between the two. I then began to think of what songs I listened to on a regular basis had alluded to books and short stories I had read.


Mr. Raven- MC Lars
MC Lars graduated as an english major from Stanford University, so it makes sense his raps have a literary basis. This song is clearly based on the short story/poem The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe and uses its most famous lines such as "While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping" and the repetition of the phrase "Nevermore".(He has also written songs about Moby Dick and Hamlet, check out his discography, smart dude).

Dead Souls- Joy Division
Pioneers of "Emo", Joy Division, wrote many allusions to darker, off-beat literature in their songs, including this one based off of Nikolai Gogol's book Dead Souls.


The Battle of Evermore- Led Zeppelin
Besides the fact Led Zeppelin may be one of the best bands of all time, they wrote this song (off Led Zeppelin IV) about the book Lord Of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Literature is everywhere, just take a listen.

My Meta-Blog

Hey Doc Oc and Mr. Bolos!
I would like you guys to assess my "Critical Viewing" blog entry.

My blogging has changed a lot since we first began. Back in the day (a whole 3 years ago), I actually was a frequent blogger on tumblr (before it completely exploded into some sort of weird obsession people have) and I had a very distinct style... by not having one at all. I pretty much just used it as an internet diary of things that interested me during the day or fun stories I just couldn't keep to myself. After being off the interwebs for a few years and coming back to the blogoshpere in a different context changed my writing style a bit, it threw me completely off kilter. In my first few posts, I wrote very mechanically and I kind of fumbled over making the transition between what we spoke about in class to a current event purely based on the fact I wasn't used to it. I ended with the question "So when we have all that we need, what can truly make us happy?" to incite a reader response, my post didn't just seem warrant a response from the body of the blog.

After a few more entries I got a little more comfortable with the forum but I'm still struggling with making my points concise. My last blog was a tad on the lengthy side... to the tune of about 2 pages on a word document. I just go onto tangent and keep talking about whatever comes to mind.

My posts are all over the place, I've gone from happiness, to women's place in the home, to domestic issues, to economic issues, to really anything that I wanted to talk about. I feel like I should continuing my posts like this because it keeps everything fresh for myself. It makes me want to blog because I know I have complete creative control over what I blog about.

I really enjoy having control over my own work. Blogging is a great outlet for me to write freely without a rigid structure like a paper. It is all about whatever I want to write about and I am in charge of what I'm writing, which is nice.

At the quarter, I'm feeling more confident in my blogging abilities and I'm enjoying it a lot more. It feels less like work and more like a personal, fun thing I can do in my free time.

Who makes a house a home?

While I was growing up, I was lucky. I had time with both my parents and I could learn important lessons from both of them, but my encounters with them and how they decided what was best for my development was apparently a little different than the rest of my north shore classmates.

My dad worked nights at Dominick's while my mom taught early bird and through the day so they could both spend time with me. My dad got me ready in the morning and we watched ESPN together as he tried to convince me that going to preschool was, in fact, the best choice I would make all day. I would then go to preschool and socialize with my fellow "classmates". Then my dad would pick me up and I would sit in the back seat of our old volvo and eat whatever cookie my dad brought me for a snack as we drove home and talked about our day. Then we would have cross over time where I would be with both my parents and I would learn about social interactions between adults from theirs in that inbetween time before my dad left for work. He would make dinner before he left then my mom would take over. She would teach me letters and numbers, watch some sesame street with me, then I would put myself to bed at around 7.

I feel like all of these interactions has made me the person I am now and has defined my relationships not only with my parents, but with my peers as well. My dad and I still watch all sporting events together and we've always shared the entertainment side of my life together since that's what we did when he was home with me. My mom and I are more academic and we talk with each other about books and school more because that's how she spent her time with me when I was little. They also both gave me parts of their personalities that I really latched onto because I was with them individually for so long. My dad gave me his sarcasm and my mom gave me her ambition.

Thinking back on my childhood makes me think about how much people's lives are shaped by their relationships with their parents. According to a study on the effects of divorce on the parent child-relationship done by the Penn State College of Medicine, children of divorce can lose their relationship with their parents because of parental withdrawal. This can cause serious ramifications in their lives, such as violence, and having trust issues in relationships further down the road, and anxiety and guilt that can follow these children for the rest of their lives. It's interesting how parental relationships can effect someone's character.

Critical Viewing

On Saturday, my friend surprised me with a drive to the Kenosha Drive-in movie theater. We were incredibly excited to finally go to a drive-in because we've been talking about it for months, but on the way something struck me. We took Sheridan Road all he way north because we don't particularly like the highway and we saw a lot of thing we are not used to. We drove by motor home parks, fast food restaurants, and advanced payday loan offices. What was most shocking was that while driving through areas like Waukegan and Winthrop Harbor, we passed no libraries, and only one grocery store. 

In AIS for the past few weeks we've been talking about how your socio-economic level effects your health. While driving we saw 17 McDonald's only on Sheridan before we took Green Bay, and numerous chain restaurants such as Wendy's, Burger King, and Arby's. The only grocery store we saw was on the border of Wisconsin, it was an Aldi. Aldi is known for it's low-prices and also for its lowish quality food and is mostly found in low-income areas. It is so distressing to see so little real food being offered in these areas. Why do lower income areas not deserve low-quality foods? Can't good foods be brought into low-income areas at reasonable prices?  


Places like Urban Organic bring organic foods at lower prices to New York City. On their website they also offer cheap, healthy recipes that people can create using healthy foods. Initiatives like this are steps in the right direction but for real change, many more of these urban organic ideas are going to need to be pushed through. It doesn't necessarily need to be organic food, in my opinion, but I think that creating a balanced diet with a lot of fruits and veggies and lean protein for lower-income families would help so many things.


According to the US Department of Health & Human Services, African-American men are 40% more likely to develop heart disease than their white counterparts. That, in conjunction with the fact that 24.7% of African-Americans live below the poverty line compared to 12% of Non-hispanic caucasians (Found HERE), shows a strong correlation between poverty and heart disease, which probably has to do with what I saw; a lack of nutrition in the urban poor life.


It was so alarming to see how much things could change in only a few miles from my house to these areas.

Remeet the Flintstones

This weekend, Boomerang had a 24 hour marathon of The Flintstones because this week was the 50th anniversary of the first episode. Since I watched the Flintstones as a kid I was supremely excited for this marathon, but something was a little weird for me. Since our discussion this week about race and sexism in America, I watched these episodes with a different eye. In one episode, Barney and Fred are attempting to watch football but Bam-Bam and Pebbles are making too much noise so they can't enjoy the game (which ended up not being on because the teenage american bandstand type shows were had taken over the TV channels) and they call over their wives Wilma and Betty to take the children. What really surprised me was the fact that these women don't snap back at their husbands like they do in shows now, Wilma just said "Betty, we'd better take care of them before they [meaning Barney and Fred] get unbearable". They just did what they were asked as if they were servants to their husbands. I find it intriguing that that was the social norm back then. That a cartoon could make such a statement about the woman's place in the home and no one would really think twice about it.

I also find it interesting how much the social landscape has changed in the past 50 years since the Flintstones first began. In TV shows now, woman have a stronger voice in the household. Gilmore Girls, a show based on the relationship between a mother and her daughter, was all about female empowerment and how they didn't need men to tell them what to do. It is very interesting to see how much everything has changed and how so many things went over my head as a child that I now understand.


That said, The Flintstones are still rockin' awesome (no pun intended).

How Do I Look?

A few weeks back I was flipping through the channels and came across "The Daily 10" on E!. Now normally I do not watch anything on E! (except maybe "The Soup" or a good movie) but the story they were talking about caught my eye. Gabourey Sidibie, the star of Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire, recently was on the cover of the magazine Elle. In her photo (Shown above), her skin was obviously lightened (full story is HERE). We talked at length this week about racism and discrimination, and I found the lightening on her skin to be completely wrong. It is sad to think that even today, in 2010, people still think that its ok to "fix" a person's skin color.

I feel like by changing Gabourey's skin color, this magazine sent another message too. When I looked at this, I felt like they were trying to change things about Gabourey because they just didn't like her. That every magazine and person is only looking for perfection and if they want to fix things, they don't care about how they make other people feel. I began to think that if I were in her position, I would feel so self-concious that someone tried to change something about me that is so apart of who I am. She is a beautiful woman and it is not fair for the media to send the message that people who are different aren't beautiful and that changing them is ok.

Omission of the Truth

A few months back, Shirley Sherrod was forced to resign by the Obama Administration from her post as Rural Agriculture Director of the state of Georgia for her allegedly racist comments in a speech she gave (Full story HERE) that were taken out of context by a right-wing blogger. As we've been talking about in class, words are chosen very carefully in all parts of media be it textbooks, speeches, or even this blog. Everything flows together to make a bigger, even sometimes subliminal, message. Ms. Sherrod's point about previously being racist towards white farmers was to show how much she had grown in her position and as a person, not that she was still the same person with the same bias she had 20 years ago (Full video can be seen HERE). The person who cut down the video wanted to make a point about racism not just being whites against blacks, but also blacks agains whites.

I feel that when words are taken out of context, almost anything can be said. For example I could say in one part of my blog that "I love the new Black Keys album", and in another say "It is awful when people steal things", and anyone with MLA citation knowledge could cut up my words up into "I love...when people steal things"(Chlo Scho's Blog). I think it is really hard to say things that can't be construed incorrectly when taken out of context, so does that put the burden of keeping the whole truth to a reporter or a blogger? Bias is bias and I believe no matter where you get your information, each reporter has control over what parts of the full story you get and they can omit the biggest truths.

The Social Network

I just updated my iTunes to iTunes 10. Usually, these updates aren't that big of a deal, a little formatting change here or fixing a few bugs there, but when iTunes relaunched I was completely thrown for a loop. There was a new icon, a new color scheme, and newest of all, a social networking site built into iTunes called Ping. This allows people to interact on the iTunes platform. All comments made when reviewing albums will now be tagged with your profile and name if you so choose. You can follow your favorite artists and find out what your friends are listening to. We've been talking in AS about what technology has done for us and how it can aid in our education and life (e.g. this blog), but a part of me wonders if it's all too much. What happened to asking for a mixed cd (or mixed tape for us analog fans) from a friend? Or asking someone "Hey, who are you really into right now?" or searching the liner notes of your favorite bands CD (or record, again for the analog fans among us) to see who their favorite bands are? Why do we have to use the internet?
 I think it sort of handicaps us from making a real connection. Sure you can find people from all over the world who happen to like all the same bands you do in the exact same order and also love the same comic you do, but when push comes to shove how beneficial is that? You have just spent time talking to this person you will probably never meet and who could seriously be ANYBODY when you could have been listening to music with your friends or finding a new band from Pitchfork or even doing your homework. Maybe I'm among the minority who don't find an online life too enticing, but I feel like establishing a real connection with people is more important than finding someone who likes Fall Out Boy as much as you do, or listening to every band Pete Wentz likes. I think that maybe we are so dependent on an online social network that we forget about the one that is most important. But maybe we can find a balance, maybe there is something I'm missing.

Can we achieve happiness?

Last week in AIS we were talking about Into The Wild and Chris's journey and what he hoped to accomplish through his travels. I couldn't help but think, would this truly make him happy? Would living alone among the wild have fed every need he had? Then I got to thinking about what really makes people happy. Does fulfilling every desire you have make you happy? What influences it? I was listening to NPR the other day and on Morning Edition they had a piece on the hunt for happiness in China and what makes the Chinese some of the most unhappy people in the world (according to the book China is Unhappy by Song Qiang) and what they are trying to do to become happier.

What was alarming to me from this article was the fact that the unhappiness in China stems from things I take for granted on a daily basis, like having adequate doctors and a government I can (somewhat) trust to look out for the best interest of the country. It's hard to believe that so much of what I just assume will be there for me like healthcare, can radically improve the happiness of a town in China.

So when we have all that we need, what can truly make us happy? Giving it up like Chris did, or something else?