11/11/11

Wishing is useless. On the eve of the momentous occasion of 11/11/11 11:11(am or pm), I feel like making a wish at that time is just the same as any moment around the clock, useless. Because wishes make us hopeful for something which either means: it will become a goal and we will strive for it, it will become forgotten in the next 30 seconds, or it will lead to a hopeful longing of something that can never happen. Thinking back on wishes I have made, I realized none of them have come true and I haven’t gotten anywhere because of them either. Why is our human race so persistent on a cause that can never be satisfied? From our childhood, we are told to make wishes on stars at night and from then on it just becomes a habit. But, why? Why can we not teach our children to be grateful for themselves, the food they eat, or the earth surrounding them? We really are setting children up for a lifetime of disappointment which seems pretty pathetic. Maybe I am just a cynical person in the making because none of mine have ever come true, but I can’t be the only one. Nor would I want to be. To have the things I wished for would make me a materialized, romantic who gets her heart broken a million times. The only wishes that have ever come true are those I have done for myself, which means they aren’t wishes at all but more like personal goals. Wishes can also be linked to the superhuman being in the sky, because isn’t “God” the one that grants wishes. The whole idea seems pretty skewed to me, I would rather just enjoy the stars and treat each moment like a gem than sit and wish for things that 95% of the time will never come true. Well, at least with the 5% I don’t sound like too much of a cynic.

180 Degrees South

So after watching this movie, my drive to conserve open spaces and explore the world has just been heightened. Patagonia is just one area of the earth with untouched beauty on the brink of globalization. The only way to conserve these areas is by buying them. For a few years now my goal in life has been to get a degree and make a substantial amount of money so that I can buy the rights to land right here in America, stopping the spread of urban sprawl to those places which it has not yet touched. Before this movie, it didnt even occur to me to do this with land throughout the world.
Ironically, I believe it will also be my love of rock climbing that drives me to travel the world in search of new land to buy. This movie is inspirational to say the least and to me if private owners held more conservation area then the land might be taken care of better.

Indigenous Education

The mystery of the people of the New World could have been solved a long time ago if the original Americans and some today that feel the only way to have a great country is if we deny there was ever something here before us. In the article "Indigenous Resistance and Racist Schooling on the Borders of Empires: Coast Salish Cultural Survival" by Michael Marker, we grasp just a small notion of what happened in the 60s and 70s that diminished the already scarce knowledge of the indigenous people of the North American continent. It is shameful that a nation built on free beliefs and religion could have tried their hardest to keep Native Americans from teaching and showing their ancestries about the culture. From outlawing ceremonies to requiring children to attend public schools, we have weeded out much of the knowledge of the wonderful land before the settlers.
It is because of this, the severity of the mass epidemic that killed most of the people on the continent will never be recovered and Native Americans will shun out everyone from their culture but themselves, a terrible fate for a once peaceful community.