The beginning of Thanksgiving is often cited in the
celebration of the Pilgrims with the Native Americans after their first successful
harvest. And while it is true that the holiday drew its origins in this (and
other) harvest celebrations, the true beginning of Thanksgiving is found to be
on October 3, 1863.
On October 3, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation,
establishing Thanksgiving Day as an official National holiday. He established
this holiday in the midst of a time of war, the Civil War was entering full
swing at this point in time, and Thanksgiving was to be a day of fasting and
prayer.
It is true that the origins of Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Day
may be traced through a number of different harvest festivals created to
commemorate the Pilgrims’ feast in a manner similar to our own, but the idea of
it as a day of prayer rather than a feast is a foreign concept to many.
I’m not claiming that everyone should convert to
Christianity for Thanksgiving and pray the whole day, but I believe if everyone
took time to recognize what they have, and how they are blessed, the holiday
would be that much more memorable (and less stressful.)
The best idea I have heard is to spend the preceding day
fasting, only eating a little if you have to, to recognize what it is like to
be truly hungry, to commemorate the Pilgrims’ hard winter, and to help you to
be thankful that we don’t go hungry. Then, when the feast is laid, dig in! and
remember how blessed this nation is to have such an abundance.
I believe a tradition like this would help bring the true
meaning of Thanksgiving back into focus: Remembering how blessed we as a Nation
are, not stuffing our faces and watching football.
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/thanks.htm
http://matthewrlee.wordpress.com/2007/11/22/thanksgiving-day-and-national-fasting/
A hot topic in most debates on Floridian environmental
issues is very often the Everglade. These vast expanses of swamp serve as both
a state tourist attraction and, perhaps more importantly, a sort of natural
filter for water as it runs off into the ocean.
The everglades are indeed one of Florida’s most important
natural treasures. They provide a home for countless creatures, a unique biosphere
found nowhere else on Earth. It is also a delicate ecosystem, which can easily
be upset by small changes, like runoff from lawns and roads, or decreases in
the water flow to the Everglades.
Unfortunately, the Everglades have not always been well
protected. As recently as 2000, the very survival of the Florida Everglades
hung in the balance. Fortunately, activists managed to raise awareness of the
Everglades’ plight to a National level, and the necessary steps where taken to
save them, at least in the short run.
Recent research however, suggests that the Everglades aren’t
out of the woods yet (if you’ll pardon my pun.) Water runoff from lawns, carrying
pesticides and fertilizers is damaging to the mangrove trees which hold the
Everglades together.
An upcoming budget increase should give Lee County (the home
of the north Everglades) around $37 million for a radical plan to improve the
quality of the water flowing in the Everglades. The money would be used to
build a giant reservoir to capture water before it is dumped into the Everglades.
There, it can be filtered and cleansed before being released back into the
Florida waterways that feed the Everglades.
As promised, here is my second review. Now, I know I said 1984, but I really meant
Fahrenheight 451. My bad. Anyways, on with the review.
Fahrenheit 451 is a
powerful modern classic, along the same vein as George Orwell's 1984,
Ayn Rand's Anthem, and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It is a
story about censorship, about the crushing power of a a tyrannical system
slowly squeezing the life out of its inhabitants, about the power of individual
thought, about the power of the written word.
Fahrenheit 451's premise is
simple – books are illegal. The television rules supreme. Society has degraded
into a hedonistic, anti-intellectual mess, populated by people who are daily
told how happy they are, while in fact they are miserably unhappy.
Guy Montag is one of those people –
brainwashed into believing that he is happy, that is life is perfect, he
nevertheless is nagged by a feeling that something is missing. Guy is a
fireman; he burns illegal books. He trudges through life, day after day, coming
home to a wife who is more interested in the
banal comings and goings of her televised “family” than in anything
real.
Then one day, Guy is woken from his
self-induced stupor. He meets a young woman named Clarisse McClellan, a singular
young woman who is completely unlike anyone else seems to be genuinely happy.
She is the first person Guy has ever met who would rather ask “Why?” instead of
“How?” – a distinction that seems to have earned her derision and ridicule
everywhere she goes.
Then Clarisse disappears, leaving
Guy wondering what was so different about her. What made her so odd, so
inquisitive, so ... happy. Then, on the heels of Clarisse's
disappearance comes a call. There are books to be burnt. As the firemen arrive
at the house, they are surprised to discover someone still living there. They
ransack the house, piling the books into a giant pile. Guy accidentally reads a
line from a book “Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine.” Guy steals
the book, and continues his job as planned. Unfortunately, the old woman who
owns the house refuses to leave and, quoting Latrimer, is burned alive with her
books. In shock, Guy is left wondering
what would drive a person to such devotion, to simple books.
The book goes on from there, but
again, I really would rather not give the whole thing away, and I will leave
the summary off there.
Fahrenheit 451 addresses a
number of subjects that are still relevant fifty years later. Censorship.
Individual thought. The written word.
Through the fire chief Captain
Beatty, Bradbury tells of the cheapening of literature, the compression of
anything worthwhile.
“Classics cut
to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book
column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume... There
were many whose sole knowledge of Hamlet was a one-page digest in a book that
claimed: now at last you can read
all the classics; keep up with your neighbors. Do you see? Out of the
nursery, into the college and back to the nursery; there's your intellectual
pattern for the past five centuries or more... School is shortened, discipline
relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost
completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about
after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting
nuts and bolts?”
Captain Beatty then turns to
censorship:
“Now let's take
up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the
more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers,
doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians,
second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen,
people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, the play, this TV serial
are not meant to represent any painters, cartogrophers, mechanics, anywhere...
Authors, full of evil thoughts. lock up your typewriters. They did... It didn't
come from the government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no
censorship to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority
pressure carried the trick, thank God... Colored people don't like Little
Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's
Cabin. Burn it. Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs?
The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace,
Montag. Take your fights outside. Better yet, into the incinerator.”
By compromising for some, the
societies of Fahrenheit 451 slowly gave up all. Everything was
compressed, ground down until one story was the same as the next. What was the
point of reading, it was on the television. Why think, let someone else take
care of that for you. The society censored itself until the government took
over.
By the time the events that Fahrenheit
451 chronicles come around, the censorship has grown in scope. Nothing is
allowed because everything offends, except for the bland tapioca of the comics,
and the television. Why? Because there should be no individual thought. All men
created equal means all men forced to be identical. People like Clarisse,
oddities that have yet to be stamped out, are quietly disposed of.
The power of words on paper is a huge
theme of this book. Over and over again, we are shown how some ink and paper
can change the world. What we put into us affects who we are.
Fahrenheit 451 is a compelling story, a true modern
classic. I recommend it whole-heartedly, for anyone and everyone.
My initial (and snarky) response to the question “Will you
continue to Blog?” was “Of Course! I haven’t finished ENC 1102 yet, have I?”
Sadly, this hit fairly close to the mark.
I have had an on-again off-again relationship with blogging
since the very early 2000s. I would get a head of steam going, and keep a blog
fairly regularly, but then I would start to feel like it was all a bit to
trivial, attempt to write about something deeper, begin to self-censor myself,
and generally loose motivation. Eventually, I would return to the blog to let
the few friends I had on there know that no, I was not dead. I would end up getting sucked back in, but
the cycle was viciously repetitive.
Another thing that often dissuaded me from blogging was the
fact that I have rarely gotten that many comments on my blogs, which usually
makes me feel isolated, and leaves me not wanting to blog any more.
If, however, I could resolve one of these two issues, I can
see myself continuing to blog for a long time to come. I enjoy the opportunity to
share myself and my thoughts with the world, and it gives me an outlet for some
of my extemporaneous thinking (and an opportunity for me to use such lovely
poly-syllabalic words as extemporaneous and antidisestablishmentarianism) and
some creative writing I occasionally do.
In other words, I would definitely continue blogging if I
found a community I could work my way into where I could receive feedback on my
writing and give feedback to others, without the pressure of deadlines and
grades.
Unfortunately, I have yet to find such a community, and as
such, will most likely cease my blogging efforts soon after the end of classes.
I decided to do a review of two of my favorite books. This week is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. ***. Next week will be 1984 by Ray Bradbury.
Do Androids Dream of
Electric Sheep? is considered by many to be a cyberpunk story; a subgenre
of Science Fiction. It focuses on a near-future, post apocalyptic world, with a
generally bleak outlook. At its heart, Androids
is a detective story. The hero? Bounty hunter Rick Deckard takes the center
stage. The setting? Earth, after the terrible World War Terminus. The planet is
covered in a radioactive dust, slowly destroying the genetics of anyone foolish
enough to stay on Earth. Most animals are extinct and caring for one has become
such a status symbol that entire companies are devoted to making electric
animals, virtually indistinguishable from a bona fide animal for those who
can't afford the real deal.
To encourage people to emigrate, the United Nations is
offering all migrants a fully operation android servant. These organic cyborgs
are virtually indistinguishable from a human. They are just as smart, and just
as strong. There in lies the problem. Androids, which are illegal on earth,
have no problem blending into the remaining crowds of Earth once they escape
from their masters on Mars.
Enter Rick Deckard. He is a bounty hunter, hired by the
San Francisco Police Department to hunt down and “retire” rouge “andys”. His
only tool in identifying these genetically engineered androids is the
Voight-Kampff empathy test, a test that measures the speed and magnitude of
involuntary reactions to carefully worded, empathy-based questions. Therein lays
the only distinguishable difference between a human and an android. Androids
experience no empathy. They are unable to feel for others. They are, in fact, a
real "tin man." Unlike Wizard
of Oz's mechanical hero, they have no heart.
The story begins in earnest when Deckard learns that
the senior bounty hunter of his area was critically injured by a rouge android
- one of the new, virtually undetectable Nexus-6 models. Even worse, there
isn't one rouge Nexus-6 android loose in the San Francisco area, there are six
of them. Deckard is contracted to retire them all as quickly as possible.
Deckard faces a race against time to identify and retire
all the androids, before they realize that they're being hunted. He faces
nearly insurmountable odds. No one has ever retired more than few androids in
one day, and Deckard is being asked to eliminate six. He also faces his own
concerns about the ethics of retiring the androids, afraid he is loosing a bit
of his humanity each time he collects his $3000 reward for retiring an android.
Deckard is soon tracked down by the first Nexus-6, posing
as a Russian detective, coming to San Francisco to learn some techniques. He
traps Deckard in a patrol car, and nearly kills him, but Deckard manages to
fend him off long enough to squeeze off a shot with his handgun, retiring his
first andy of the day.
An interesting scene soon follows when Deckard meets with
another bounty hunter - Phil Resch. Resch, unlike Deckard, has no qualms
whatsoever about eliminating androids. He guns down the police chief of his
station (one of Deckard's 6 Nexus-6 andys) without batting an eye. This total
lack of emotion disturbs Deckard, who begins to fear Resch is an android too.
However, the Voigt-Kampff empathy test comes back negative. Resch is definitely
a human. Yet the novel raises an interesting point here. Has Resch, at some
point, become something less than
human?
Android’s author, Phillip ***, often struggled with the idea of a
human committing the atrocities of the Holocaust, and in an attempt to
reconcile this disbelief in the worst of humanity with his idea of the basic
goodness of man; he began to view the *** as inhuman, fiends hiding behind
the masks of humanity. This eventually led to the image of the android,
literally a calculating, inhuman machine hiding behind a mask of flesh.
Desch assists Deckard in retiring a third andy, then
leaves Deckard to finish the job, crediting him with the kill of the andy
posing as a police chief since he claims he never would have realized what he
was without Deckard's help.
Deckard, who is deeply disturbed by Resch's enthusiasm and
by his own lack, considers calling it quits. He has already made $9000 and is
struggling with the concept of continuing to hunt down more androids, in which
he has recognized an almost human desire to better themselves. In the end,
Deckard purchases a living goat, in an attempt to assuage his conscious, but is
having problems continuing. He consults Wilbur Mercer, a semi-religious figure,
through an "empathy box" which allows the user to experience the
emotions of everyone else using the empathy box. Mercer instructs Deckard,
telling him that sometimes doing the wrong thing is necessary for the good of
the whole.
Androids raises
a number of interesting questions throughout the course of its story. What does
it mean to be human? Can artificial life actually become human? Can a human
become, in at least one sense of the word, "artificial?" The novel
also addresses the concept of entropy with the poignant passage:
This rehearsal will end, the
performance will end, the singers will die, eventually the last score of the
music will be destroyed in one way or another; finally the name Mozart will
vanish and the dust will have won. If not on this planet then another. We can
evade it for a while. As the andys can evade me and exist a finite stretch
longer. But I get them or some other bounty hunter gets them. In a way, he
realized, I'm part of the form-destroying process of entropy. The Rosen
Corporation [the company that makes the androids] creates and I unmake. Or
anyhow it must seem to them (page 86).
I really enjoy reading, especially good classics.
Unfortunately college life has seriously cut down on the amount of time I have
to devote to reading, but I still have managed to keep moving on some of them.
One book I was forced to put on hold during this semester was
Les Miserables. I’ve been bogged down
in the middle portion for some time now, simply because I haven’t had enough
time to commit to finish reading it.
This brings me to one of my major beefs with college so far.
While college is designed to teach and instruct, it does very little to
encourage people to learn how to learn, which seems to be a very crucial life
skill. Instead of encouraging students to go out and learn as much as they can,
it seems that each class is obsessed with itself, obsessed with writing,
obsessed with philosophy, obsessed with whatever the title of the class is, and
nothing more.
While this is understandable with such subjects as Calculus,
or Chemistry, the so-called Liberal Arts classes (so named because they are
intended to give students a liberal
education in all the arts) should not
be so focused in my opinion. I feel that each class in this area needs to “bleed”
into other areas a bit more. More reading is needed in writing, more analyzing
in Acquisition of Knowledge. These tasks are often performed by students in
more advanced classes in each area, but unfortunately, many students don’t have
the opportunity to delve deeply into every area, and are instead focused on
their major.
If the “Intro to…” classes could be made more inclusive, it
would, it seems, give students a better base upon which to build the rest of
their knowledge, which would, in turn, help them learn better.
The presidential election is officially upon us.The mudslinging has begun.
This next years presidential election is touchy issue among almost anybody you talk to, whether Republican, Democrat or (heaven help us!) independent.
Politics have always been a little dirty, as something that happened years in a candidates past could suddenly be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the national spotlight. Somethings are important, and warrant the voter's consideration, like recent allegations that Rudy Giuliani utilized the NYPD as a sort of escort for his extra-marital girlfriend, having them walk her dogs, and take her from place to place. How much truth is to be found in these allegations remains to be seen, but the corruption is a serious charge.
However, recent attacks made by Hillary Clinton against her closest competitor Barack Obama are bordering on the ridiculous. Several weeks ago, a rumor was circulated that the Hilary campaign had some serious "dirt" on Obama, but was withholding it from the public because Hilary was to "noble" to release it.
Puh-lease! This has no substance whatsoever, but it allows Hilary to attack her competitor without actually attacking him, a brilliant move politically (and one she borrowed from none of than "Tricky ***" Nixon).
But more recently, the Hilary campaign attacked Obama on an essay he had written. In kindergarten!
This is getting out of hand. Politicians should focus more on defining what makes them a better candidate, what special qualifications they have over their adversaries, and less on slinging copious amounts of trumped-up or irrelevant charges at everyone else, in hopes that one or two allegations will "stick."
By the way...
I'm a Republican - this rant is directed at whoever annoys me, and not because I am an Obama supporter.
Today's post is a response to the poem "The Lanyard" by Billy Collins
It is written from the point of view of an adult, looking back on his past as a child. It reflects on the attitude of a child, not realizing all that he has been giving, at least not totally, but wishing to give something back.
His mother had given him so much throughout his life he recognizes. Love, shelter, food, and care.
The child's gift was a lanyard, woven at camp. The author reflects that "he never saw anyone wear a lanyard, if that is what you did with them" but that, as a child, it seemed quite a sufficient gift.
Yet somehow, the lanyard, the author recognizes, is more than what it is at first glance. It is a recognition by the child of his mother's sacrifice, care, and love. It is an expression of the child's love for his mother. This is the "smaller" intangible gift to his mother.
Hooo Boy.
Today, I grabbed my regular Oracle, looking forward to reading a bit about college life, upcoming movies, the Bulls football and soccer teams (woohoo! Second round of the NCAA tournament), and a look different look at some political issues than I normally read.
Instead, I spotted an article that spent 1/8 of a school newspaper (seriously - there was a 1/2 page front page lead into a full page article, plus a 1/2 page editorial, that's two pages, in a 16 page newspaper) essentially bashing the USF ROTC programs in an ill-informed rant. Not something I would expect out of an officially sanctioned college newspaper.
In the article, the author claimed that the US military's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy was discrimanatory against gays and lesbians, and then went on bashing ROTC for the money they take from USF, their new building, supposed free parking, war worries, recruitment, and benefits given to ROTC students.
Most of this argument is ridiculous, and a good deal just isn't true.
The "Don't ask, don't tell" policy was implemented to keep distractions out of the military. It is a serious, professional organization, one that must keep its focus at all times. In order to protect this professional atmosphere, the military implemented this policy. It is a behavior that directly effects the military's readiness. This doesn't mean gays and lesbians aren't allowed in the military, just that they aren't supposed to advertise it. Likewise, the "don't ask" part ensures that people aren't discriminated against.
The total budget for USF, in 2000-2001 no less, was over $177 million! Three ROTC programs drew less than $150,000 last year. That means all three ROTC programs combined drew less than 1% of the school's money! Yet this article acts as if USF paid for the CW Bill Young Hall ($5 million from donations and a federal grant) itself!
The article then launched into a tirade concerning supposed free parking that non-USF ROTC students recieved. This is just preposterous. I know personally that no AF ROTC student recieved free parking. Many students had to shell out the $80+ dollars for a parking permit so they could stay on campus for three hours a week for mandatory PT sessions and ROTC classes. In previous years, there had been programs avaliable to allow non-USF ROTC students to purchase reduced cost parking permits only good for the Sun Dome lot to reflect the fact that they only parked there a few hours (usually in the very early morning) a week.
The author wrapped up with the standard complaining against ROTC detachments and battalions that has been seen around the world. It accuses ROTC programs of grooming students for the current war, and complains of recruiting on campus. Of course ROTC programs are training students for the war in Iraq and the asymetrical warfare of the War on Terror! That is the program's goal! To prepare students to become officers and leaders in the military. If future officers weren't trained for these conflicts, they could very well get themselves (and the enlisted men and women serving under them) killed!
What the article doesn't address is all that ROTC does for USF. With the construction of the CW Bill Young Hall, all branches expect an increase in recruitment, not just from inside the school, but in drawing undecided students to USF as well. In addition, USF has the ability to stand with just 38 other schools in the world with it's three branches of ROTC represented: Army, Navy, and Air Force. And it is the only school in the world with a Joint Military Leadership Center, the CW Bill Young Hall (misquoted by the Oracle as the "Junior" Military Leadership Center) which is designed to encourage cross-branch relations, and encourage teamwork and communication.
This is a blog about the movie "Thank You For Smoking." As such, I am responding to a question from a list sent out by my ENC 1101 teacher.
Would a doctor convincing his or her patients to smoke in order to bring in more
business later (sickly people need to see the doctor more often) be any different
than Nick Naylor persuading people to smoke?
There is a difference in occupation that has to be looked at here. A doctor's job is to help keep their patients (ie customers) healthy. A lobbyist's job is, as the movie said, to give a fair hearing to everyone, even the bad guys.
So a lobbyist for a tobacco conglomerant persuading people to smoke is entirely different from a doctor trying to persuade people to smoke. A lobbyist's job is to support the company that has hired him. A doctor's job is to keep the people who hired him safe.
Just as it would be unethical (and really stupid) for Nick to suddenly stand up on the news and scream "Smoking is going to kill you! Stop! It's all a lie!" so it would be unethical (and really stupid) for a doctor to encourage someone to smoke. In both instances, the person is hurting the person who hired them.
In fact, it might even be worse for a doctor to encourage people to smoke, since people tend to place an implicate trust in anyone wearing a white lab coat, and believe whatever they tell them.
Not only is it a good way for the doctor to be sued for malpractice, a doctor who recommends people to smoke so he can make more money from them is behaving highly unethically.
People often assume the news are perfectly unbiased sources of, well, news, but the fact is that any news sources is biased by the views of the person disseminating it. The arguments are always based off of the three rhetorical analysis, but despite what you might think, most are not based on logos. I will look at some recent headlines from major news sources and look at what the basis of their stories are.
Fat Kids Sleep Less?
This gem comes to us from Fox News. A sensationalist running story, the obesity of America, is combined with children, a real case of Pathos. Of course we feel bad for overweight kids - usually it's their parents' fault they are overweight, as the parents choose what the kid gets to eat, and we all are worried about our waistline.
Oprah "cleans house" in school abuse case
"Cleans house" - what a wonderful choice of quotes. And school abuse is a hot topic issue with us right now. Combine these two and *bam*! The perfect headline. Again, we get Pathos
UK children 'groomed by al Qaida'
Al Qaida is the hot button topic. It plays off of our fears. Say "Al Qaida" and you bring up memories of 9-11, or Iraq, attacks on America. Again, add in children, and the threat of them being raised by Al Qaida. Again - Pathos.
Children, you'll notice, are a common thread here. The Middle Class of America is united by an almost ubiquitous thing. Children. And nothing plays on the fears of the middle class like threatening their children.
Travel plays a very important role in many movies. Some, like Little Miss Sunshine are very obvious. Others are not quite so blatant. Others, travel forms the very core of the story. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is one such movie, and The Fellowship of the Ring especially.
J. R. R. Tolkien's story is a well known tale. A young, vulnerable, and entirely unprepared hobbit named Frodo (read short, fuzzy-footed, curly-haired Elijah Bloom) is thrust into the battle for the very fate of the world. This hobbit's ring, inherited from an eccentric uncle, is actually the property of the Big Bad Guy (Sauron for those of you , and he seems to want it very badly. So much so, that he is sending his minions searching the entire world for this little hobbit.
The obvious solution for the hobbit and his friends is to take it to the wise elf Elrond (read Agent Smith minus the sunglasses, but plus long hair and pointy ears). He will surely know what to do with it!
This is the first journey of the hobbits. They brave a haunted wood, a haunted land, and some really freaky black-cloaked horsemen before they meet up with an odd ranger named Aragorn (read scruffy, sword carrying, pipe-smoking Viggo Mortenson). He offers to guide them to Elrond. The journey takes a dire turn when Frodo is stabbed by one of the afore-mentioned freaky cloaked riders, who it turns out are the most powerful servants of Sauron. So, no biggie, right?
Actually, the wound is poisoned, and Frodo nearly dies before being rescues by the elves. Which elf is a matter of contention, since the movies feature Arwen (read Aragorn pointy-eared girlfriend), while the books feature Elrohir (read shortly introduced, quickly disappearing side character who happens to also have pointy ears).
You would think that after all this effort, that Tolkien would have been satisfied with letting these poor little hobbits off, but no. It turns out that the ring needs to be destroyed to vanquish the Big Bad Guy (aka Sauron). Unfortunately, this ring is special. It can only be destroyed in the cracks of Mount Doom (read big scary volcano way the heck far away). It also turns out that the ring corrupts anyone who bears it, and since Frodo is already the bearer, hey, no sense in getting anyone else's hands dirty. Also, it seems that hobbits feel the effects of the ring a little bit more slowly.
So a fellowship forms (Hey... The fellowship of the ring. Clever.) to escort Frodo all the way to Mordor and Mount Doom, which, as previously mentioned, is way the heck thataways. This group has a long journey ahead of them, and the locations they end up in are always vital to the plot. The snowy peaks of the mountains. The dank and orc (read nasty little bug-eyed creeps with pointy swords) -infested mines of Moria, to the peacful elf haven of Loth Lorien. Each location brings new wonders and new dangers.
Plant City is an interesting little town. Originally, it was simply a train depot where local farmers would sell the goods to be shipped to more northerly markets. A town slowly grew up around that depot, and eventually, the area where Highway60, I-4, and the trains all converged.
The town has never forgotten its history as a farming community. Plant City, in fact, remains a farming town. IT is the official winter strawberry capital of the world (at least it was last time I checked). The winter strawberry harvest (which starts to come in very soon here) is the largest in the world. A most people are incredibly proud of this. In fact, the most important event of many Plant City residents is the annual Strawberry Festival.
The Strawberry Festival is an annual celebration of all things strawberry. If it is strawberry related, you can find it here. Milkshakes, cookies, ice cream, candies, and did I mention a strawberry tilt-o-whirl?
The midway, while not as impressive as the State Fair's, is still a sight to behold. Flashing lights, blaring music, screams and laughs. Blurs of whirling, nausea-inducing rides, all intent on upsetting your equilibrium through whirling; backwards, forwards, over and under.
Entertainers come from around the country, some, famous country singers, or southern rock bands. Recently, some praise and worship bands have made appearances. Every night, someone else fills the concrete bleachers with fans, waiting to hear some old classics, and new favorites.
This festival is just part of what makes Plant City so different from many other cities. It's an agricultural town, and proud of it. The Strawberry Festival has become a national tourist attraction, bringing people from all over the nation, and even the world, to taste the celebrated Plant City strawberry.
[Article commented on may be found here]
"Travel Stories: Lower East Side" took a look at the area of New York City know as the "Lower East Side", described as a "bubbling and fragrant melting pot", found between Chinatown and Little Italy. It is the first spot many immigrants settled in when they moved to America, and thus is steeped in New York history.
This area has, according to the article, been going through something of a renaissance, with new buildings coming almost daily to this section of New York. The article focused on some of the responses people have had to the changes the area is going through.
Some people think the new additions, like a snazzy new hotel, or new bars and restaurants are bringing new life to this aging section of the Big Apple. Others see these new buildings as eyesoars, towering over the skyline of the surrounding area.
The article then takes a look at some of the attractions of the lower East Side, both old and new. Some, like Katz's Deli, are famous destinations that have even been featured in movies (like "When Harry Met Sally"). Others, like wd~50, are brand new, modern dining destinations, where you can rub elbows with the rich and famous.
This is the attraction, according to the article, of the modern-day lower East Side. The classic Mom and Pop stores with recipies handed down through generations of New Yorkers can be found right next door to brand-new, ultra modern bars and restaurants.
"Pearls Before Breakfast" is an article from the Washington Post's April 8th issue. It can be found here, on the Washington Post's website.
The article was about an on-the-street concert featuring the world-renowned virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell. Mr. Bell, a child prodigy, is now 39, and is considered to be one of the finest violinists in the entire world. His instrument? A 1713 Stradivarius, preserved in extraordinary condition - it still has its original coat of varnish, considered to be part of the reason the instrument sounds so extraordinary. The location? L'Enfant Station in Washington, D.C. The objective? To see if people will recognize genius when it is found in an unexpected place.
Bell played for nearly an hour, posing as a mendicant street musician, while a hidden camera looked on.Around 1,097 people walked through the area where Bell was playing in the 43 minutes he was there. Only seven of them stopped to listen for more than a minute. Twenty-seven threw money into Bell's violin case, netting him a mere $32 during his stint L'Enfant Station, compared to the $1,000 per minute he can command when playing concerts around the world.
I find it simply amazing that anyone could ignore him as he played. Watching some of the camera footage of the experiment, you could hear the violin filling the arcade with sound. Yet most people, when asked if they had heard anyone playing, said they couldn't even remember seeing a violinist.
It seems, that in the context of a busy subway station, most people simply filtered out the music like so much noise. Some scientists have suggested that the human mind can only process one sense at a time, virutually ignoring all the others while concentrating on, for example, looking for arrival and departure times, or talking on a cell phone.
Some of the few people that stopped were relatively unimpressed by Bell's playing. One, a D.C. lawyer, confessed that she wasn't even listening to the music, but rather analyzing his situation in the same way she would spend the rest of her day analyzing cases. One that was impressed, however, was three-year-old Evan Parker. He repeatedly tried to return to listen to Bell playing, while his mother dragged him off to preschool before she went off to work. In fact, every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and listen, only to be pulled onwards by a rushed parent.
The only time there was more than one person playing at any one time was near the end of Bell's performance. Two different people stopped, one, John Picarello, for a whole 9 minutes, waiting while Bell finished the piece he was playing. Interestingly enough, both of them had studied violin when they were younger. Picarello had even considered making it his living.
What does this tell us about beauty and art? That you are made more aware of the art in any theater after having participated in it? Why did the children all want to stop and listen? Perhaps they simply had less to think about. Or maybe the mind of a child is more open?
This article raised some very interesting questions for myself, and I am glad I got a chance to share it with you.
~Grant