First Draft of Author's note

 
   America, Most describe it as the land of the free, where whatever
religion you had it didn't matter. Did this apply to everyone? no, African
Americans who were first brought to America in colonial times were slaves
striped their freedom and religions they had since they had to convert to
Christianity or they were considered people that are to look down upon.
If America was the "land of the free" why have the Africans and other
races at the time were forced into being an American. The mistreating of
African Americans stretched far from the early days of America till now and
probably even into the future. The problem is that it is a belief that someone
can judge a person by their color,religion, and race and say that all people of
the same race,color, or religion is this type of person. This belief is stamped
so hard into some people's mind that racism will never fade away or solved.
This issue although could be stopped over time. This book is dedicated to
giving young children so that they know that racism is wrong since when a
child is young their minds are easily acceptable to change unlike older people
who can not change that easily. This book can be a first step to solve racism
so that in the future people, like the African Americans who were
discriminated all over history could finally feel like they were free from
the bonds of discrimination which gave them so much disadvantages.


Cited Sources
"Racism Timeline." Leading issues time lines.21 jun 2010:n.p. Sirs
Researcher. web 09DEC2010
Stoff Michael , Pedro Castillo, James west Davidson. The American Nation.
United States of America, Prentice Hall, 2002

Research topic #2 Poverty

   I think that poverty is a issue that should have been solved in this time
already, I mean there are still a lot of countries that are barely getting by
in their days of working and grow hungry. Even if they live in a poor
country the US should at least get them some food supplies.
Feeding other nations do not benefit the US but at least it can help our
nation in some ways. Like if we donated more food to nations which need
it we have less food supplies and then our nation doesn't have to have the
issue of obesity by raising the food price here. It can also benefit our
nation by making alliances with those many small nations so that our country
can grow bigger in size. My mom would know somethings about the time
she was in Vietnam, since at that time there was poverty since the Vietnam
war was over the country was poor. She had 5 siblings and both her parents
at that time.  My mother told me that in Vietnam she had to eat plain
noodles everyday without anything to eat with it, she couldn't get
any meat for it no chicken, no pork, no fish. The only thing close a
candy she ever ate was a brown raw bar  made from melted sugar.
She also didn't know what choco;ate was until coming to america for the
first time. Having the food we have here was like heaven for her so think
about poverty in that way.

Research Topic 1 Racism

   Racism in America It started three hundred years ago and sadly is still
happening in this country. In racism it is a belief in which people are judge on
by their skin color, where they come from, and their religion. This kind of
stuff pisses me off every time, it makes me embarrassed to actually be human.
Every time I hear of this stuff I ask myself how stupid and childish these
people can be. It feels like this is a kind of bullying that happens in school,
except sized to a larger scale. Even when we are grown we have
these childish acts of bullying others because they are weak, different,
and weird. In this article it talks about America's police brutality.
I think this exactly supports my idea of how these people with more
power can just do what ever they want. They work for the government and
you can't fight back against them in this country. It seems to me the ranks of the government is enlisted with some racist people. You should see what happens
if you give someone racist power in a government, for example Hitler was
a racist person and he was given power to lead a country, that is when the
Holocaust happened. In this other article this woman figured out that one of her
family member was in the ku klux klan and that reminded me about what we
were studying in social studies. It was the time period in which African
Americans were terrorized by the ku klux klan after president Lincoln and
Andrew Johnson stood in his place. While African Americans were being killed
he just watched while it happened. In all I think racism is another way ho we
are killing ourselves, this what makes us truly human and there is no way to
change from this. The only solution to end this is to all is to end the human race.

Social action 3

   This is a remake for the first one I had to do because I wrote using read
and respond to songs and/or poems on social problems not New/Media
Immersion.

   What I saw on the news of these days were mostly about criminal/terriost
and natural disasters. One thing I think of out of all of this is the things
I wouldn't have thought would still be undergoing of today, These drug
lords and empire are actively going on openly in today's world. It disgusts
me that we know of these drug lords in other countries, even their names
and where they live and yet there is no action taken to stop them. I know
our country can't do anything without permission from that county that
drug lords live in. They are criminals and yet they have almost equal power
to a government. Also another thing I've noticed in media/news is that
a lot of natural disasters began around the world, one is of them is
the Indonesia volcano eruption which killed 130 people which seems
impossible to happen since the volcano was already active before it erupted
which seems weird because of why the government didn't seem to tell them
to get out of the area before the volcano explodes. Even today we get killed
from natural disasters like these in which we already see coming.

   My reflection on this is that to me, these daily events happen every day
and I think that the human race has really have no chance of surviving into
at least 2500 since there are so much conflicts/problems around the world,
political,war,disaster. I wonder why we couldn't all relax just for one day
where there arn't any crimes committed, any political debate, why can't
we just have peace? But that question to me is already answered, its
because we're all humans, and its natural for us to try and make problems
all around us.

Social Awareness #2

   I am responding to this song that I heard, Rage Against The Machines,
Testify Which is a band in which really devoted to singing songs about
the U.S government and the wrongs they did, I think, because the songs
sometimes are hard to understand  but this song to me was easier to
understand. I think it talks about how President Bush and how he sends
solders to Middle East to fight a war that is not really their business,
instead he just wants to gain a favor of getting the oil resources from
that country. Maybe this song talks about the death of solders fighting
in a war that they have no reasons to fight in are dying while the
government are just carelessly using up people. This may be a
wrong summary of the song but its what it feels like to me.

Social Awareness #1 option 5

   This post is to respond to the song World on Fire by Sarah McLachlan
on how she writes a song and makes a video without any of the
professional equipment to work with so that she could donate to people
in need all around the world instead. She would've needed $150,000 for
that entire video too, so that shows that she is really dedicated to helping
people out. Also her video that she showed instead could be very usefull
in raising other people awareness because of the examples of how much
of some money could help many people, and to proof for this is that
the proportions she showed amazed me how $3000 could provide 10,950
meals for all those starving. It also saddens me that we people in America
are really wasteful though, and that with $3000 we used on wasteful
things like buying $100 shoes which you'd threw away after a year or
so. I think this music video is a big eye opener and we should spread this
video around.

Entry 8

   In my response to the poem Mother to Son, I think its
a great poem about life and all of its flaws. Langston Hughes
really made a great metaphor of life to a staircase, how some
staircases could be smooth and straight while others could
be rough and crooked. To me Langston Hughes seem to
print the message of how life works for different people,
and that I think he really makes it real, like he been through
it before. What also makes this poem great is the accent that
the author uses, like
"I'se been a-climbin' on."
I like this way of adding more feeling to the poem so it
kind of makes a story. I think that the author really was
trying to make story of how a Mother seems to be
in one of those deep lessons where a mother talks to the
son in this long conversation. It's just the same, and in my
view shes trying to tell her son to not staying in one spot,
she wants him to keep living no matter how tough it gets
just like she lived her life. I also remember a lesson my mother
taught me when I was young so I could connect to the poem.

Appreciation First Draft

   Everyone on this planet has always thought about what they
were born for, and what reason that they were born into this
planet, this universe, this dimension. This is what everyone wants
to know, whether they were born for the reason so that they could
exist with a reason. The book, The Giver in my opinion relates to this
question everyone wants so much, and to me the author seems to
answered that anyone can make a change even if you are only one
person, Only if you want a change in this world, then you have to
be devoted to the idea of how the world should be, its like in this
book called, V for Vendetta in where at the end the main character
says " ideas are bulletproof" meaning even if you die you pass your
idea of the world you want it to be to another person to complete.
   The society is a place where people with no goals are made,
each and everyone of them are mold into what society
leaders make them into. Its a place where people are recorded
down in history as nobody, and when you die the name given
to you at birth is recycled again to be use again for the next
person to be repeated in this same depressing cycle. This is the
problem in Jonas's world. You live like a worker ant, if
you die you'll get replaced, This world is a world in which no one
is important, I hate that kind of world , because I believe that
everyone is born with a purpose in which they complete through-
out life.
   In a world like that, there is bound to be someone who would
change that kind of world. This is where a person, like Jonas
feels that the world doesn't fit his view, so he changes it using
all his efforts even if it means dying as a example he is ready to die for the
world to change on page 157,

" 'Music,"The Giver said, smiling 'I began to hear something truly
remarkable, and it is called music. I'll give you some before I go."
Jonas shook his head emphatically.'No,Giver,"he said.
"I want you to keep that,to have with you, when I'm gone."

 This paragraph tells that Jonas has overcome all of his
fears so that he devotes his life to making things better for people
that are near him, and in doing that he goes down the road that he
knows that he will die at the end, even though he wants to change
the world into a better place he won't be seeing it. To break the cycle of that
kept everyone inside a mental prison. That is a honorable sacrifice.
   In my past I have had this personal problem in which I
wanted to be different from everyone I didn't want to blend
in with the sea of people on earth, because I knew there were
millions of other people and you are just one person out of all
of them and its kind scary to know that some people will
live without a purpose in life since there are so much people
to take spaces up in our world. I wanted to make a mark in
my world, not literally but I wanted to leave something in
this world that I will lived for a reason. I want to be someone
that is known to actually change the world in some way for
the good or bad since every choice has both.
I think the Giver is a great book because it influences you actually want to
stand up and try to change the world so its better.

Entry 7 - research to know more about your book/author

   As my two research exercises I chosen were Author Isolations
 which is reading about the other books the author wrote and
relate them to the current book and Biography squats which is
to read about the authors life and see if it influences the book in
anyway.

   As I read about the books that Lois Lowry I noticed this book
that was familiar to me and I found that the book Number the
Stars was a book that I read in my old school and I really liked
that book because of its theme of how these people endured
pain and were hunted and as the main character witness these
events as a child she would undergo this transformation where
this is the world in front of her is the real world not blinded by
the mist where truths are hidden to you as a kid. It was just the
same in my childhood book The Giver as Jonas is changed by
the truth of how things worked in his world while he is a child
he could have chosen to ignore the fact like the kid he is or he
takes a wise decision and leave everything behind.
   Reading the biography made me notice that in her life she
talked about how all of her book related to her life, like for a
example she wrote the book A Summer to Die was a book
she wrote about her sister's early death and her feeling of loss
over it. So I've learned that great books require real life
experiences to actually make a connection to the reader or give
the book a meaning instead of just entertaining the reader.

Entry #6 The Giver

My most interesting note or the note that stood
out to me most was probably are the notes
I wrote on Jonas's parents because of how they are
well developed into that kind of character you would
expect them to be in this book. I really like how they
are designed like robots in this story and how cold they
are. For a example on page149 where Jonas's dad
just kills a baby and almost dust his hands off and
takes it as a joke about where he says "bye bye little guy".
Also on page 127 as if they were avoiding Jonas's question
of whether they love him or not, and they give these
automatic responses you would expect a lifeless
person would say. But still I should be hating these
characters but you have to feel sorry for them
since they don't feel anything for what they do since
it was taken away from them, their just simple doing
what they have to do, I think if they were given the
emotions to choose they would've done the right thing instead.

Revised Reading Response for ELA Class 810

   The themes in this story are simple but they cover and mold the story to how it is.
Without these themes this book would just be a simple gray fifth grade book.
Everything about the story is influenced in the book but one particular one stands
out from all the others, Death. At the beginning of the book the pig Wilbur would
be killed because of the unfairness of life relating to death theme and at the end
Charlotte died for the pig which is what I thought about how life and death
was balanced out because of how Charlotte's life was the price of Wilbur's life. 
This book stands out to me personally as a children's book because of its strong
connection to death so that its actually more emotional and at the start I thought
it was just some ridiculous fantasy with some talking animals to keep little kids
amused.
   In the story one of the time where death stood out to me most was on page
seventy-three where also a life for a life was exchanged where a egg that
could have hatched into a full grown goose was taken so that Charlotte a
tiny spider could live a little longer. This shows to me that maybe death is
the same to all creatures from humans, cows,fish,ants. So this book made
me look at death in a different way so  I could understand it in any point of
view.
   In my life I had never had anyone die that was close to me until nine months
ago where my grandma on my mom's side died. At the funeral I felt as if at
that time the most sad feeling throughout my entire life. This feeling of
death that knowing the person lying in the coffin will never wake up or
ever talk again, not even open their eyes its as if you lost this precious
invaluable thing you could never replace again. This was something about
death in my life.