Civic Duty

People need to start being more respectful towards eachother. When I go out and walk around the city, I see people littering, standing in the middle of aisles of stores oblivous to everyone else, sticking their feet out on the CTA making it difficult to get by, and talking loudly and bothering others.. It is so frustrating to see people doing this. It's like they have no consideraton for anyone else besides themselves. The disrespectfulness of this city is the thing that I hate the most. As far as I can tell, this only hapens in big cities. Almost everywhere else that I have gone, especially small communities, everyone is extremely friendly and are just waiting to have a conversation with you and they are respectful of others. I know that this is a big city and that complete strangers aren't just going to start becoming friends over night, but we need to look out for one another and not just have our own best interest in mind all of the time. There is a lot of room for improvement so until then take baby steps and hold your garbage until you get to a trash can. Move to the side of an aisle or side walk to loiter. Stick your feet out until someone else comes on the train. And try to talk quieter when around others.

Is Povety A Choice?

My family isn't the richest family in the world. My dad had been without a job for about a year and was sending out applicatons every day to try and find somewhere to work. We recently got extremely lucky. Right before his unemployment benefits stopped, my dad found a job and, after about a year of scraping by, we are finally financially stable. In the case of my family,  poverty wasn't a choice. We were not comfortable with worrying that the next bills wouldn't be able to be paid. In All Souls, on the surface at least, it seems as if the Macdonalds want to be poor and they are happy being there. Even though Ma can't provide for her family and they live off of wellfare she seems to get along with almost everyone and seems to enjoy talking to them. However, I don't think that she wants to be there. We could see this when Frankie left for the Navy and Ma was happy that he was leaving Southie. So, no, I don't think that povert is a choice. eventhough 15% of ll Americans live below the poverty line, I don't think that they want to be there. Parents don't want to have to worry about financial issues and they don't want to have to worry about how their kids will grow up. Poverty is just smething that people, unfortunately, fall into and because they don't have anyone else to lean on, they usually stay there and live depressing lives without hope of escaping.

Intigration

Even though many families say that they want everyone to be equal and want everyone to get along, I have learned from personal experiences that this is, at least subconsciously, not true. My family and their friends are almost all white and want their kids to go to a white school or want to live in a white neighborhood. I am not trying to say that they are racist. When these people are out in the streets they have no problem meeting or befriending people of different races. They are just not comfortable with being a minority. These fears that they heave probably come from stories that they heard, and even if they aren't true have been passed down to me.

From what I have seen in the news and from what I have been told, most people don't want to integrate. I'm fine with that. I feel that it is wrong to try and force people to get intigrated. If groups of people are forced to get intigrated, they will still have resentment for the group that they now have to live with. In order to be truly integrated, people will have to reach out by their own will.

Malcolm X

     So far, The Autobiography of Malcolm X has been one of the most enjoyable books that I have read for school. I really like how brutally honest Malcolm is with us. He is telling us things that seem to be hurting him to have to remember such as when he had a conk and how ashamed he was to have burned his scalp to look more white.
     My favorite part of the book so far has been the part where he started to become self educated in prison and his struggle to get rid of his former uneducated street self. I liked this part because it was his transformation from being on the streets to helping out other African Americans. Malcolm began learning after he conformed to Islam. Frustrated that he couldn't write a decent letter to reply to Elijah Muhammad, Macolm began copying words out of the dictionary to not only improve his handwriting but to allow himself to read anything. I really admired how dedicated he was to learning.

King still king?

Martin Luther King Jr. played an important role in helping to desegregate America. I can't even imagine what America would look like now if it hadn't been for him. Still I don't think he should be called a king, I think that Matin Luther King thought that he was just a normal person trying to help out other normal people.

Meaning in my life

I have been recently struggling with finding a  reason for why I do things in my life. Everyday I wake up at 5:30 just to swim or finish my homework, both of which I would rather not do. For a while I thought that I was just doing this so that I could please my parents but now that I am actually thinking about it, I swim and do well in school because deep down, it makes me happy. I like to learn and I actually do like to swim. I think that everyone should do things that they enjoy doing and those things give your life meaning.

Music Review - Good People by Jack Johnson

A song that I really like is Good People by Jack Johnson. I like this song because it is very relaxing but also has a strong message behind it. Good People is about how there is so much misery in the world today. In the song, Jack tells us about television and why it is bad for society. A few of the things that come to mind when I think of television being bad are news stations and stations that show "children's" shows. The News almost always focuses on the negative parts of society such s natural disasters, people gettng killed/raped, and other sources of misery. This can lead to more people killing and hurting others trying to be worse than the previous stories. Other things that are bad about television are stations that show "children's" shows mainly Disney Channel. Kids are new in the world and don't know a whole lot so they learn by observing things around them. By watching shows such as Good Luck Charlie, Jessie, or A.N.T. Farm they are learning that it is good and funny to not listen to your parents, get in trouble, and not do well in school. Unless they have parents that tell them otherwise, kids can carry these ideas into adulthood and then they cn commit crimes and hurt others and not think anything of it. In order for there to be more good people in the world, there have to be good adults setting good examples for children.