Harsh Working Conditions, Harsh Reality

We like to think that the days of child labor are over. We like to think that the 14 hour work day is finished. We like to think that sweat shops are empty, and that no one shall ever work there again. We like to think these are true, but we couldn't be more wrong.
Sweat shops across the world are actually becoming MORE popular than what they were in the US 70 years ago. They are springing up in places like Brazil, China, and India. These are countries that are known for being highly populated and having a large lower class and a small upper class. These are all descriptors of the US around 70 years ago. Then, just as the working conditions got as bad as they possibly could get, protests broke out, and labor laws, minimum wage, and unions were established. Eventually, the sweat shops disappeared from US soil. However, now they have apparently sprung up in other countries. You can thank gigantic companies (like Nike, Gap, and Apple) for that.
Yes, we like to think that those harsh times are over. We like to think that the world works a 9-5 job. However, we can only make progress if we wake up from this fantasy we are in. We must take greater steps to help other countries in need rather than simply putting our work there. We actually must take our sweatshops out of foreign countries in order to help them. We have to use charity to help these people, not 14 hour days in a cramped room.

Banned Books Begone!

 All Quiet on the Western Front, Animal Farm, The Da Vinci Code, The Grapes of Wrath, and Uncle Tom's Cabin. 

What do all of these books have in common besides being highly acclaimed? They were all banned. Sure, they all deal with touchy subjects such as race, religion, and politics; but isn't that what makes them great? Should Huckleberry Finn be added to this list?

 Lets take All Quiet on the Western Front, for instance. I was required to read that book in the eighth grade. It was to much of my surprise when I found out that it had been banned. I was stunned: "There must be other books that dehumanize war" I thought. After some research, it didn't surprise me that it was Nazi Germany who banned it.

Next, lets find out why Animal Farm was banned. It deals with the fall of Socialism in communist Russia. Its not to hard to figure out why the USSR banned it. 

The Da Vinci Code. Even in the United States, a land that was based on the ideal of freedom of speech, is this work scrutinized. I can remember turning on CNN a few years ago and watching Christian Priests denounce Dan Brown. However, the actual banning of the book took place in Lebanon, where the Christian leaders deemed it offensive to their religion.

Why was The Grapes of Wrath banned and burned in California? It "made the residents of this region look bad" (same link as above).

As for Uncle Tom's Cabin, lets just say that the future Confederate States of America didn't like the idea of a Pro-Abolition story narrated by a slave.

Now I will ask you one more question: What do all of these explanations for the banning of books have in common? They all challenge the popular belief of their time. Or, at least, the authority's belief. Huckleberry Finn definitely challenges the authority of it's time. The book should be mentioned in the same breath as All Quiet on the Western front or Uncle Tom's Cabin, but it shouldn't be banned. None of these books should have been. I believe in freedom of speech and the ability to challenge popular belief. Should a radio personality be taken off the air because of a negative comment about the Rutgers Basketball team? Should "French Fries" be called "Freedom Fries" because of political disagreements? Of course not! While censorship may be needed for decency (like a certain Super Bowl Half Time scandal) it is not needed for hiding opinions. After all, a wise man named Mark Twain once wrote: "Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them".

Romanticism in the NFL

TRUE fans don't sleep the night before the NFL draft. They clutch their pillows, turn on the night light and cry like babies in the fear that their favorite NFL team will not choose the right college superstar. They live in fear of the "Ki-Jana Carter" pick of 1995. They dream of the "Payton Manning" pick of 1998. They anxiously await for Tim Tebow to graduate in 2010. TRUE fans know who to take in the first, second, and last round of the draft. Even if they end up Ryan Leaf (never heard of him? Exactly.)
Come on sports fans! If anything, NFL history has taught us that your ranking in the draft means nothing. Ray Lewis got drafted as the 26th pick in the first round. I can think of plenty of teams that need him right now (like the Detroit LetDowns, I mean, Lions). The hype of the NFL draft is simply too much. People live and die on these choices, yet they rarely make much of a difference. ESPN dedicates it's entire day of programming to the NFL draft. Granted, Payton and Eli Manning did go as first-round picks, but do you know who else did? Akili Smith and Mike Junkin (irony included in their names). The draft gets so romanticised that people hang on every moment it and go to bed feeling like their sky has fallen. We, as human beings, need to step back and realize that the draft is simply an event. The only thing that matters is the score of the game. All TRUE fans know that.

(The picture is of the all-time bust of a draft pick, Ki-Jana Carter)

Great (and Terrible) Expectations

Like most students during the "blog moratorium", I used my blog-free time following the inauguration of Barack Obama. I saw it with my own eyes, and then I looked around the room. Nothing had changed. The ground didn't quake, the sky didn't fall, and the country was still in an economic slump. The hype leading up to the inauguration was more ground breaking than the actual event. With the way I had read about it, seen news stories about it, and heard about it from friends, I expected many things from the inauguration. First of all, I expected someone to try to kill the new President. Don't get me wrong, I definitely DID NOT want that to happen, but I had heard from every news channel that the president was "beefing up" security because of death threats and suspicion. I learned that his limousine had 3 inches of steel covering the doors. I also learned that he wore a bullet proof vest when he delivered his acceptance speech, and that he spent millions more than any other president on security for his inauguration. Secondly, I expected that everything evil in America would disappear. In a way, President Obama fulfilled some of that expectation. He shut down Gitmo on his first day. It is a great start, but with the way the media had hyped him, he APPARENTLY should have cured cancer by now. I guess President Obama "transcends race" but he does not transcend his own humanity. Besides, he is only 12 days into the job. Personally, I'll give him 4 years to change the world.

WWTD? (What Would Thoreau Do?)

Irony is a funny thing. Walden Pond, chosen for its suclusion by Henry David Thoreau, is now a tourist attraction."There were nearly 74,000 visitors in the month of June" says The New York Times. People are coming from all over to see the iconic symbol of American thought that is Henry David Thoreau. This makes me wonder, would Thoreau like this pilgrimage? When I read Walden, I got the impression that HDT wanted us to live our own lives, not his. People that go to Walden Pond are searching for something. They want what HDT found. However, Thoreau says himself: "Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it" (6).
We must take a step back, and realize that HDT is now our senior. We now must break away from Thoreau's experience. We each need to become Thoreaus and Emersons and find our own Walden Pond. After all, Thoreau even said: "The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over by their predecessors" (6). We need to find our own path.

"Attention Holiday Shoppers!"

It's only December 7th, and I can already hear it...
"Attention holiday shoppers! There is a 45% off sale on something you don't need! Aisle 5!"

Yes, it is that time of the year again. The time of the year when kids get what they asked for, and parents feel the budget crunch even more. However, even the kids don't stay happy. They play with their holiday presents for maybe a month or two, then it gets shoved in the back of the closet, packed up right next to last Christmas' tennis shoes you swore you would wear, but never got around to wearing. I am a teenager on the North Shore. This scene is all too familiar.
I noticed this occurrence before, yet I haven't been able to put it into words until after reading Thoreau's Walden. He talked about the difference between the "need" and the "want" for something. He talked about using only the essentials to survive. The movie that we watched in AS put it as "Un-cluttering his life". I could not agree with Thoreau more. We are bred into the thought that bigger, greater, and more is better. We complicate things, and therefore, we are unhappy a month after Christmas, when the material object we used to fill the void in our lives has lost its lustre. We have a need for more "stuff" because we want to be happy. The obvious question is then: why are we so sad?
I think it is because we have lost ourselves in our routine. Have you ever noticed how nice a half day (like the one last Friday) is? We get to breathe, and see a new side to the 3 and a half hours that we usually spend in school. We tried something else. Another example is the typical "north shore soccer mom". You usually don't see these people happy on a regular basis because they are genuinely bored with life. They spend each day waiting for something exciting to happen, go to bed unhappy, and start the day over again. So then they say to themselves: "I bet that brand new tennis racket would change up my routine!" So they go and purchase it, and it soon takes a back seat to the next tennis racket they buy five months later. The amount of money we spend to make ourselves happy is ridiculous. Is there an answer to this vicious cycle of discontent? Perhaps we will find out in Walden...


Does money buy happiness? The guy in the picture sure seems like he digs it...

Bike Trip

(This may seem personal, but bear with me)

Over the past summer, my parents confronted me by saying that I needed to do something that would really bring me out of my "shell". They proposed that I go on a trip of sorts. So I did some researching (by that, of course, I mean Google) and I found a popular hiking/biking/service program called Overland that stretches across the United States. I was enticed by the "American Challenge". This is the trip where bikers cross the United States (literally from ocean to ocean) with 2 leaders and 12 high-schoolers. When I told my parents that I wanted to consider this, they asked me: "Why this trip?" A valid question; and one I didn't have an answer to until reading Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay, History. Emerson says that one should learn from experiencing life, not by reading about it. He says: "Civil and natural history, the history of art and of literature, must be explained from individual history, or must remain words" (7). Of course, Emerson is talking about history, and not a bike trip, yet I still feel the same message applies. One cannot learn about himself by going through the motions at his old life. That is why my parents offered the suggestion of a trip in the first place! Emerson keeps me in check by writing in his other essay, Self-Reliance: "He who travels to be amused, or to get something which he doesn't not carry, travels away from himself...Traveling is a fool's paradise" (34). Aren't I traveling to gain confidence? This quote unnerves me because I feel that if I go on this trip, and gain nothing from it, it will be a waste. I am not going to study, to do service work, or to learn from art, as Emerson qualifies that past statement. I am at a standstill as to what to do. Maybe I should be a little bit more self-reliant, and decide for myself!

If anyone who reads this has done any trips with Overland, please comment on what you thought of it!