Story of My Life

Tucson Mexican American Studies Banned

 It is now 2012 and people are still afraid of books and certain subjects in school. The Tucson Arizona school district is banning Mexican American studies and banning certain books that have to do with the curriculum in the course. These books wont even be offered in the school library for students to read on their own. Are people afraid of loosing their whiteness or something. The ability to understand another culture is how we gain respect for and from others. Arizona is a border state and should be a lot more sympathetic to the diversity of cultures it has. Ignoring it is only going to break up its community. Here is a link to one article.Tucson Mexican American Studies Banned. We also went over the list of banned books in my Contemporary American Literature class. Go read history from another perspective. I'm finishing up a book called George Washington Gomez by Americo Paredes. It is about the transition that border families had to go through shortly after Mexico lost its North American lands. Mexican families had their lands taken away and were forced to move to a near by state across the border, a place that was foreign to them because culture is different form state to state, town to town, family to family.

A Purpose for Everything

Brown paper napkin,
to you I write my balad.
Too corse for my nose,
but not the sandwich infront of me.
Her greens wet your edges.
Transparent becomes your center.
You're tearing at the fold.
Where else will I place you,
but in the plastic depths of hell?
Why do I write this?
You deserve a proper burial.
Your history now recorded.
I leave you to decompose.

Irony

Jesus served others and lived a humble life.

I'm Always Behind on Music

So I'm not always the cool and hip, up to date person on new music. This last year I found a few bands that were either introduced to me by friends, or came up through surfing Pandora or channels on youtube.

Vampire weekend was introduced to me by my good friend Colin Jennings while vacationing out in California. He knew I would like Vampire Weekend after hearing me listen to The Spinto Band. I compare Vampire Weekend to a cross between Paul Simon and The Clash.


I found White Lies while watching a Quick Silver surfing video of Kelly Slater. It was the background music and it was just perfect for the moment. I even used it in my own California trip video this last summer.


When Mandi introduced MGMT to me I thought, "What a bunch of smelly hipsters." You can't judge a book by its cover and I feel dumb for doing so. They deserve a lot of respect.


On my drive to Washington, we got the chance to take turns playing our music. Tyler put on Girl Talks album, "All Day." I was blown away at how well the music was mixed. 70's and 80's pop and rock blended with hip hop to make a dance album. Just awesome!

Foundation

I had a bit of time for some leisure reading over winter break. While school is in session I don't really have a lot of time to read books of my choice. All of my reading time is taken up by the books that are assigned to me by my professors.

I love science fiction and there was one trilogy that kept coming up on the greatest science fiction sagas of all time: Foundation by Isaac Asimov. By chance, I picked up the first book at savers for 50 cents a few years ago and it had been sitting on my shelf collecting dust. I  bought the book because I knew that Isaac Asimov was an important author in science fiction and  I thought I would get around to reading the book some day.

The first book was a little hard to get used to. There were sometimes 100 year gaps in the stories. It was hard to follow who was who because there were so many characters for each time period. This is not to say that the character development was lacking. In the second book I found a greater emotional attachment to the character called "The Mule." He was a "mutant" who despised all of humanity for treating him different. Because of this, he used his mind control power to dominate the galaxy.

It made me think of how we are all a product of our environment. We need to be very careful with how we treat others. I think a lot of this development happens early on, like in grade school. I think of how much can change in the world because of how one person is treated. There is a lot of talk about anti bullying laws. People do not realize that these laws not only protect the individual, but also society as a whole. Once again I find science fiction literature to be a leader in preventing harmful futures by playing out possible scenarios. Science fiction helps us think and change for good and bad. It is a genre of understanding and deserves respect.

My Question for the Crew of the International Space Station

This week I saw that Space.com was looking for questions to ask the crew of the International Space Station. I submitted about four, hoping that one would be chosen out of the many that were submitted for the ten minute time slot they had to talk to the astronauts. I got my wish. I asked about the research the Astronauts were doing in order to prepare us for missions beyond low Earth orbit. You can hear my question at 6:33 on this video.

I care very much for space exploration. If you want to get anywhere in the future you must start now or the future will never come.