I know it might sound like a cruel joke but its not, live animals such as turtles and fish are being sealed in airtight plastic bags and sold as key chains. Animal cruelty laws in China are almost non-existent, so unfortunately, this practice is completly legal in China. Venders claim the water is nutrient rich, but, fish need oxygen to breathe, as do turtles, so regardless of how many bogus claims the venders make about the water, these animals die in a matter of days, if not hours. Please sign the online petition to stop this inhumane cruelty here!
"The sun gave a great shout of light and then, after several hours of thought, quietly retracted the statement"My favorite radio show is called Welcome To Night Vale. The host of this show described the sun rising as giving a great shout of light, and then instead of saying night was coming and it was getting darker, he said the sun retracted the statement. This quote shows great imagery, which we have been talking about in class, and which I try to incorporate into all of my own writing.
With Halloween coming up I just wanted to remind everyone that not all costumes are created equally, costumes of heavily stereotypes marginalized groups ARE harmful and do contribute to ongoing oppressions. Native Americans, Romani people (aka the slur "gyspy"), Asians, Mexicans, Alaskans: These people and their cultures are not costumes! Halloween is a lot of fun for a lot of people, but it shouldn't come at the expense of other people and their heritage and traditions. Wedding rings found by US army soldiers near the Buchenwald concentration camp. Germany, May 1945. — National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md. This picture is of wedding rings taken from Jewish prisoners from the Buchenwald concentration camp. This image conjures up thoughts of loving men and women being taken from one another, and the item signifying their marriage being stolen. This saddens me, because for some people, these wrings were all they had left of their relationship, and it being taken is like a part of their life being taken. Like in the book Night, Elie didn't want to give up his shoes even though it meant a good living place where he could be with his father. Yet, he couldn't give up his shoes because they were all he had left of his previous life. His shoes represented a better life, much like how these rings represent a better time in the lives of hundreds. What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? When I read this poem, I thought about the meaning of the word "deferred." In this sense, I saw that a dream deferred was a dream that was set aside, delayed, or abandoned. This can be interpreted in many ways but I saw it as being abandoned. My favorite thing about this poem is the large amount of symbolism in each line. For example, when the author describes a dream deferred as a raisin in the sun, I saw this as meaning a raisin that dries up in the sun and loses its juices, and a dream deferred will "dry up" and lose its vitality. The next line has more of a powerful type of imagery and symbolism because it puts a darker image in the readers mind. This line symbolizes resentment growing, and shows a parallel between a wound worsening, like a sore, and inflamed emotions. The following line congers a sour image to the mind, and symbolizes how a dream can wither, rot, and begin to seem terrible, like rotten meat. The next line uses words like sugar, syrupy, and sweet to symbolize the false image that everything is all well, and after many lines depicting gruesome ideas, this line is like a compensation for the bad ideas that were thought previously. Then, when the dream sags like a heavy load, defeat is symbolized, and the sweet image before is realized to be dying. The dream sags because it has been deferred. So with the age, eventually, the dream will give up and die, or, the dreamer will grow old, give up old dreams, and die. In the end, the urge to re-realize the once forgotten or deferred dream becomes too strong, and explodes. I really like this poem because it seems to linger in my mind, it makes me think about what dreams I have deferred. This poem helped me realize a dream deferred is never really gone, it has just gone into a coma, and we never know what we might have accomplished had we pursued them. At the best, the dream will be accomplished, and at the worst it will be deferred, and eventually fade into oblivion, never to return again. An important part of living an empathetic life is frequent human interaction. It's important to cultivate curiosity about strangers just so one can put their life in perspective. For instance, the man in the picture is paying other people to tell him about their lives. This makes the person feel good, and it made him feel good for his kind act. Talking to others can help someone know how privileged they are, and, in the right state of mind, they can form empathy towards others. "The world didn't get worse, your eyes just got wider." I really like this quote because it is saying how someone can see the world in a certain way one day, then the next day, see it completely differently. This is not because the world has gotten worse overnight, it's because their eyes have gotten wider, and they now see what they didn't see before.
This video is one of my favorite short films. It has a good message, and leaves you feeling happy about someone else's happiness. The film is about a blind boy who falls in love with an unexpected friend. Although the movie is in Italian, I highly recommend watching it (with the subtitles of course). I enjoy movies like this because its focus is not of a world wide problem, or a national disaster, it is of a young boy who has many problems of his own, but overcomes these problems in an unexpected way. It leaves you thinking, on the edge of your seat, and hoping for more. I recommend this movie, and hope more people decided to make short stories with good plot lines, and that sends a good message to the people who watch it. "La tristtesse durera toujours" translates to "The sadness with last forever," the last words of one of my favorite artists, Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh was a greatly underrated artist who spent many years plagued by depression and mental illness. I have always loved Van Gogh because he used his sorrow as a drive to created some of the most beautiful and beloved art in the world. He turned his pain into ecstatic beauty, and used the little money he had to do what he loved, instead of getting what he needs to survive. Much new news has been circulating about Van Gogh recently, which is surprising considering he's dead. But, a new painting of his has been authenticated, and Van Gogh's death is being re-examined. It was previously thought that Van Gogh took his own life due to depression, but, that theory is being questioned. "In Van Gogh: the Life, a biography published in 2011, authors Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith argue that van Gogh did not commit suicide but was shot accidentally by two boys he knew who had "a malfunctioning gun".[2] A curator at the Van Gogh Museum has warned that experts "cannot yet agree" with the authors' conclusions about the painter's death." To read more on the real death of Van Gogh, read here. I have chosen to write about this subject today because I sympathize with Van Gogh. I love his art and is dedication and passion about what he did and loved, and I wouldn't want him to be wrongfully accused of doing something he didn't do. These were just a few random acts of kindness I found on the internet that I really liked. Everyday I find myself doing more and more acts of kindness purely with the goal to make the world a little brighter.
|
|