MRS. = MR’S.

Nasty Little Brats:
A (semi) Rant In response to Maureen Dowd article for “The New York Times, “What’s A Modern Girl To Do?”
(http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/magazine/30feminism.html?ex=1288324800&en=197a1142bf2ba967&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss)

Most people misunderstand what feminism is about. The true definition of a feminist is someone who believes that women should be treated equally to men. A feminist can be a woman or a man, hetero or homosexual, and any race or religion. Not understanding this is what might be fueling what could be called a backlash to feminism. Nasty little brats who take what their mothers and grandmothers went though for granted are the women who are leading this backlash. Even though they take full advantage of many of the things these women got for them they don’t understand them.

In one part of Dowd’s article she talks about how women today use the dinner check as a way of testing whether a man is worth a second date. When the check comes they offer to pay, fully expecting of course that he’ll decline her offer and ante-up. As one woman said, “If you offer, and they accept, then it's over." That pisses me off quite a bit. She is taking what feminists in the 60s and 70s gave her the ability to do, have money to pay for her own meal, and using it as bait to get him to pay anyway. I think we all have to admit to hoping that someone else would pay when we’ve been out, but offering to pay and then getting angry when the other person accepts is just dishonest.

Feminists in the 70s worked hard to have it all: a rewarding relationship, a career, and a family. Women today seem to be throwing that away. Sure there are examples of where that contributed to problems within the family, but it is definitely not the only thing that was hurting them. In many cases the problem was probably more the man’s fault, expecting the women to bring in half the income and fulfill the womanly duties of cooking and cleaning.

Maybe my views have to do with my upbringing. My mother’s name is Janet Dougherty-Smith. She works full time. She doesn’t cook unless she feels like making some crock-pot surprise and usually cleans on the weekend. She brings in probably 90 percent of our family’s income. My dad cooks dinner for our family every night, does laundry and vacuums, and runs a stained glass business out of our house. Yet somehow my parents have an equal relationship.

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I think I need to change some stuff in this. It isn’t very rant-like, and sort of wanders around. I will work on it and update it later. Writing is hard work. Also I'm not saying the girl in the cartoon is a nasty little brat. Her predicament is all too true.

Recycle Or Else

Throwing something away that can be recycled should be illegal. We have the resources to recycle many things; paper, glass, plastic, metal. Recycling reduces the waste that goes into landfills and the amount of new material that needs to be produced. Many people don’t recycle because they are lazy. Being fined for not recycling would deter this laziness.

People would not be alone in this national effort to improve the lives of everyone. There would be a recycle pick up \ every week, just like the garbage pick up. Recycle bins would be placed in public places just as frequently, if not more than garbage cans. Recycle receptacles would be attractive too, not those giant ugly blue or red bins that you see now.

People who purchase things made out of recycled material would be rewarded because those things would cost less. The higher the recycled content percentage, the bigger the discount would be. Imagine the pride one would feel in recycling cans one day, and buying paperclips made out of those cans the next.

More recycling would mean less trash in landfills. Smaller landfills mean cleaner environments, and a clean place to live makes everyone happy.

It takes gall...

Editorial
Hiding Behind Katrina
Published: October 21, 2005
NY Times

"It takes gall to use Hurricane Katrina as cover to undermine the democratic process, but that's what conservative ideologues are attempting in the House. Among their budget-cutting proposals - being sold as "tough choices" for America to pay for the Gulf Coast recovery - is a startling plan to kill public financing in the presidential election system.

That program, financed by $3 checkoffs volunteered by taxpayers on their returns, has been a bulwark of presidential elections. It was enacted about 30 years ago, after the Watergate scandal exposed the big-money bagmen corrupting the heart of the political process. It makes politics more competitive for underdogs, more involving for the public and less reliant on floods of special-interest campaign money.

Congress should indeed turn its attention to the program - not to end it, but to repair its outdated limits. The primary calendar has become so front-loaded that the candidates with the strongest sources of private donations are now choosing to skip the limitations of public financing so they can spend early and furiously, leaving other challengers at a disadvantage.

The primary subsidy formula needs to be made more realistic to level the field, and the checkoff amount should be increased. Candidates should not be allowed to have it both ways by feeding on private money in the primaries, then switching to public money in the general election, as President Bush and Senator John Kerry did last year.

Under the current system, participating candidates in the primaries receive matching funds for the first $250 of each private contribution. This one-to-one formula should be increased to two-to-one matching or more as a way to invite more of the small donations that began showing up impressively last year from Internet users.

Sponsors of the House proposal must know they are wrong because they are trying to tuck the change into a budget bill without a public hearing and debate. If they want budget cuts, they should focus on government waste, not open elections."

The author of this editorial is saying that the conservatives are going about budget cutting in the wrong way, and dishonestly. The way they start out is effective because it’s something that everyone can agree on, “It takes gall to use Hurricane Katrina as cover to undermine the democratic process.” They then explain what it is that’s the conservatives are trying to change. This argument is not saying that the public funding of the presidential should not be changed, just changed in a completely different way than the conservatives want to.

The writer explains pretty well why his idea is better than the conservative one. They say that we need the public funding to avoid corruption, and the level the playing field for candidates. Those are both things I think most people would agree with. Using common sense to explain your argument seems to be helpful in getting people to at least see your side, if not getting them to agree with you. The writer also seems to be trying not to take sides. They point out that both Bush and Kerry used a strategy for raising money that the writer disagrees with. If they were trying to say that the liberals were always right they would have left out Kerry.

I think the last paragraph is very effective. It is using a fact, that there are no public hearings about this subject, to say that the conservatives will know that people won’t like their idea. The writer says they “must know they are wrong.” This is a good point, in my opinion, and helps steer readers toward agreeing with the writer.

Go Bridget Go

Bridget’s argument for Title IX was very well thought out. First she gave examples how the United States has worked to end discrimination. She told how Title IX also works against discrimination. Talking about the “three prongs” was effective. A lot of people probably assume that it is hard for schools to comply with Title IX, but when she showed that they only needed to meet one of those standards she showed how simple it was.

Another thing that worked in her argument was showing the other things Title IX does outside of sports. While some people might not care about sports, they will most likely react to something about sexual harassment. I think everyone would agree with her that there should be something in place to prevent it.

Bridget seems to assume some things in her last paragraph. She says that without Title IX gender discrimination would have continued. While this might be true, there is nothing that backs this statement up, showing that Title IX is the only thing preventing gender discrimination today.

I think the argument would have been more effective if she had said exactly what Title IX did, maybe by quoting it. Her thesis, that Title IX only helps, and does not hurt colleges, comes across very well. Bridget seems to care a lot about this subject, and that also comes across in the writing.

Adapting

In Adaptation, Charlie Kaufman shows the struggle that a writer goes through getting something from an idea to a finished product. He showed how it is much harder to write something that you truly care about, than when you don’t. He cared about what Susan Orlean would think about his screenplay, so he wanted to make it good. He looked up to her so much that he didn’t think he could make a movie that would be as good as her book. I think his lack of faith in himself is common in writers.

The relationship between Orlean and LaRoache was an extreme example between the writer and the person being interviewed. It showed that it was necessary to actually meet the person. Orlean would not have learned many things about LaRoache had she just talked to him over the phone. Their relationship also showed that a journalist, or anyone who is interviewing someone, should not jump to conclusions about someone right away. In the movie it seemed like Orlean was ready to write about what a weirdo LaRoache was. When she actually started listening to what he was saying she realized how interesting he was.

The need for a quality interview was also shown with Kaufman. Many people in the movie pointed out how his screenplay would probably be easier to write if he just met with Orlean. Meeting with her could have helped him figure out the best way to turn her book into a movie. He could have got more personal stories about her and LaRoache that he could put in his movie.

I thought the best part of the movie was that all the things Kaufman’s character in the movie said was wrong with movies were stuck in at the end. He said he didn’t want to change Orlean’s book into an action movie with car chases and violence, but that is what most people would leave Adaptation remembering most. I think Kaufman did this to show the irony and absurdity of trying to make a quality movie in Hollywood.

Abstinence only sex-education is not the right way to go about teaching teenagers about sexual health. Telling students not to have sex will not prevent them from having sex (no, not even if they sign a pledge). Rather than learning the facts about sexuality, students who go through abstinence-only education have less knowledge about sex, their bodies, birth control, and anything else that falls out of the category of “abstinence.”

Generally students who have abstinence-only education have just as much sex and more oral sex than students who don’t. They contract STDs more frequently and have higher instances of becoming pregnant because they were never taught about birth control or how to have a healthy sexual-relationship outside of marriage. Many students who go through abstinence-only health classes end up doing “everything but sex,” believing that this is in keeping with their pledge to wait until they are married to have sex.

In districts where sex education consists of an abstinence only program, health textbooks are censored. Chapters on AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases, marriage and dating, and birth control are often cut completely out of books. AIDS prevention assemblies and presentations have been cancelled in schools because they go against the abstinence-only program.

Proponents of abstinence only education seem to be in complete denial about what they’re talking about. Often when a child is told never to do something, their curiosity is peaked and they will do it anyway, possibly even more than if they were never told not to. Why should sex be any different?

The United States is the only country in the world that is trying an abstinence-only approach to sex education. The US also has a teen-pregnancy rate at least twice as high as Canada, and the United Kingdom, and ten times as high as in the Netherlands. Obviously something is not working. Teenagers in the United States need to have comprehensive and thorough sex education that plainly states all their birth control options (including abstinence from sex completely), educates them about their bodies, and explains how to have healthy relationships, both sexually and not, in and out of marriage.
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“Abstinence-only programs often promote alarmist misinformation about sexual health and force-feed students religious ideology that condemns homosexuality, masturbation, abortion, and contraception. In doing so, they endanger students' sexual health.”

“Comprehensive, medically accurate sexuality education is becoming the exception rather than the rule; as a result, more students lack basic information. In Granite Bay, one student asked where his cervix was, and another inquired if she could become pregnant from oral sex.”

– Planned Parenthood.

All We Are Saying

John Lennon said many things that sound impossible in practice, but incredible in theory: “All you need is love,” “Give peace a chance,” “Imagine there’s no countries.” Trying to turn these things that most people would call mere dreams, into realities, was one of his main goals in life.

Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono used their fame in the ‘60s and ‘70s to bring the cause of peace and anti-war to the forefront of people’s minds. They used their honeymoon as a chance to do this, staging what they called a Bed-In, at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Canada. Lennon wanted to use the media to sell the idea of peace the way companies “use it to sell soap.”

Lennon and Ono also took the ideas in his song “Imagine” to new levels with Nutopia, a mythical country they created in 1973. Everyone was already a citizen of Nutopia, no one needed passports, there were no boundaries, and any piece of white cloth could be the flag. The announcement of this country was in the album “Mind Games.” Lennon and Ono also requested that Nutopia be admitted to the UN:

“DECLARATION OF NUTOPIA
We announce the birth of a conceptual country, NUTOPIA.
Citizenship of the country can be obtained by declaration of your awareness of NUTOPIA.
NUTOPIA has no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people.
NUTOPIA has no laws other than cosmic.
All people of NUTOPIA are ambassadors of the country.

As two ambassadors of NUTOPIA, we ask for diplomatic immunity and recognition in the United Nations of our country and our people.

YOKO ONO LENNON (with signature)
JOHN ONO LENNON (with signature)

Nutopian Embassy
One White Street
New York, New York 10012
April 1, 1973”

Although it should be noted that this declaration was made on April Fool’s Day, the idea of something that would bring people together in a peaceful way was a very serious goal for Lennon.

The idea of giving peace a chance was important to Lennon as well. During the Vietnam War clashes between people who supported the war and those against it were heated. Lennon disagreed when people said that peace was impossible. He believed that if people would just give the idea of peace a chance, it would, in time, come to be a reality.

Mr. George W. Two-Terms-Mandate Bush

George W. Bush says that he believes that the war in Iraq is just. He says the US is involved there because we had to free the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein. Although it hasn’t been mentioned by anyone in the current administration in quite awhile the original reason for going to Iraq was finding weapons of mass destruction that were destined to be used against us. The President has changed the reasons for going to war in Iraq many times and says that each different reason was there from the start.

Bush believed that there were enough troops involved in the invasion of Iraq to guarantee stability. He doesn’t seem to think that the casualty rates for American soldiers prove otherwise. He also does not believe that the American people should be able to see pictures of the caskets of fallen soldiers once they return to the US. Rather than concentrate on the negative aspects of the war, Bush chooses to focus on the progress made.

President Bush, and others in his administration say that the US will have to stay in Iraq for many years, possibly even decades, to keep the situation there stable. They say we need to prevent the country from falling into civil war.

Many things for President Bush are black and white. Either you’re with him or against him. You support the war, or you hate the troops in the military. You’re with the US or you’re with the terrorists. This way of looking at the world can get things done faster, but it can also hurt the country.

We’re Going Home

“Safe... when I'm with you I feel so safe... like I'm home.” - Andrew Largeman in Garden State

Home is most definitely not a place. It’s a feeling. I think this quote from the film “Garden State” sums up most of what I think about home. For me being home is feeling safe and comfortable.

Home is often a group of people. This includes my family, of course, but also a small group of friends. Whether at one of their houses, in a car, or bumming around at Waterfront Park I feel like I’m at home. This has to do with the level of comfort. Being at home with someone means you can trust them, and they can trust you.

In looser terms home could be any place. In Ways of Knowing we’ve been talking a lot about feeling at home in nature, in the world, and finding home in your own mind. This is just as important as being at home with people. In nature you can feel like you belong there, just like the feeling of belonging with friends and family.

I’m going back home for Thanksgiving. I don’t know what I’ll feel like. I hope I still feel like I belong there. I think I am lucky because my room hasn’t been taken over by my brother, like a few other people. (Although he did threaten to knock out the wall separating our rooms and make it a “man-lounge,” (his words not mine) complete with dark wallpaper and leather chairs.) I look forward to seeing my family, my cats, and my friends. It will be like home again to go to the Christmas tree lighting the day after Thanksgiving for our annual tradition, although it will be a bigger group now that everyone has a date to bring with them. I am glad that our group is flexible like that; we can make our circle of home bigger.

I know there will be a time when my house doesn’t feel like home anymore. It might be when I stop coming home for every school break, when I move out for good, when I get married, or buy my own house. Although I know that will be a hard experience I’m glad that I know that I will always be home with the people I love.

More Garden State:
Andrew: You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone.
Sam: I still feel at home in my house.
Andrew: You'll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day one day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for you kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is: A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.


edit: so Noel and I used the same quote.... we are just awesome like that.

On My Person

The jewelry I wear every day are some of the most important things I own. I wear my rings nearly every day. The most important one is white gold ring with a star sapphire in the middle with a tiny diamonds on either side that my mom gave me. I love the way the metal is shaped; swirling around each gem. Sometimes I stare at it in more boring classes (never comp…) and see if I can get the right angle to make the star appear in the blue stone. The second ring is my class ring. I think it’s cool because I designed it. It looks like a traditional class ring, but more feminine. It’s very personal; my birthstone is in it, and my name is engraved in the inside. The last ring I wear daily is a silver one I bought at the Saturday Market this summer at a little shop called Katmandu To You. Although it is newer than the other two the band is already bent from everyday wear. The band has a little dude that looks like a moon on it, which is also a circle. Attached to this is another circle which has a little swirl like an ‘s’. I don’t really know if it means anything. But I really like it.

I wear a bracelet everyday that I hardly ever take off. It looks like a silver ID bracelet but instead of a name it says “Peace.” This expresses a lot of things about me: I’m a peaceful person, generally, I support peace rather than war, and it reminds me to be at peace with my life. It is also sentimental as it is one of the first gifts Kellen gave me.

I have tons of other jewelry as anyone who has been in my room has seen. Most of them have little sentimental meaning, they are just pretty, and probably were really cheap. There are a few pieces that really mean a lot to me, these were the ones I choose to wear every day.

my escapist dream

Here is my secret:

If time and money were no issue I would probably move to Crete.

Since I saw a show about Crete on the Travel channel a few years ago I have wanted to visit there. The biggest reason for this was the scenery. The turquoise Mediterranean Sea, the lush forests, and rocky canyons all looked too beautiful to believe.

I don’t know which region or what city I would live in, except it would have to be within walking distance of the beach, probably in a non-tourist area. I would become a local. I would live in a really small house. Bedroom, bathroom, cooking area is all I’d really need. Wealth isn’t my goal here; a simple and content life is what I would want in my Cretan bungalow.

I would want to work; I’d get bored just sitting around all day, even if I was surrounded by beauty. I might teach, or I might open a bike rental stand. Whatever I felt like. Someone would have to come with me in my move to Crete. I would get too lonely there by myself. I have actually talked to a few people about this and they seem to think it’s a great idea.

This wish is nearly impossible as I am too caught up in this country’s politics and trying to make it better and I don’t know how well moving away from it would help. There is always retirement.

Nard

I thought it was really interesting how Knox became interested in the classics. His being involved in the wars made him look at the classic books in different ways than most people. This was especially noticeable when the author of the piece was talking about the questions of how much man has changed over the centuries. From the outside, the ancient wars and modern wars seem completely different. Perhaps with further studies you would see the similarities.

I think this assignment showed something important about writing. We were talking about leads in class, and this article proves that they are important. From what our class, and the author of the article said, no one was really drawn into the introductions for the Odyssey or the Iliad. Only upon finding out about the author are we drawn to actually read what he has to say. This seems to be the opposite of the workshop we did in class. I think that this article and the introduction itself prove that a great lead really can make a great piece of writing even better, and will cause more people to read it.