Inaugural Adress Analysis

After looking at exactly what our lovely presidents say I came up with a few observations:

• Although a lot of our people were not free in the 1700's, 1800's and 1900's it seems as if our presidents in the 2000's used  the word "freedom" more.  
• Years 1853-1893 we went through of a group of presidents that really enjoyed facial hair. 
• George Bush Senior had the world "hand" in his most popular. Maybe a fasination with his hands? hm. 
• None of our presidents were completly bald ever
• John F. Kennedy was the only man to have "side" in his list of most popular words. 

Song of Our Time

Even though I listen to music almost all the time, it is really hard for me to find a song that describes "our time."   I believe that the people of this 2011 year are very confident and feel like if they set their mind to something they want  they will achieve it.  That is why I picked the song, Firework by Katy Perry.  In all honesty, I really don't like the song at all, I just believe that it describes this time in our society.  It is pretty much sending the overall message that you can do anything no matter what is going on, and no matter how bad you feel.  With the economy the way it is and the difficulties the United States is facing I think it is good that we have a song like Katy Perry's. Sure, we have some bad times right now,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGJuMBdaqIw&ob=av2e but her song really just prooves that no matter what it can always get better.

Lyrics

Do you ever feel like a plastic bag,
drifting through the wind
wanting to start again?
Do you ever feel, feel so paper thin
like a house of cards,
one blow from caving in?
Do you ever feel already buried deep?
6 feet under screams but no one seems to hear a thing
Do you know that there's still a chance for you
'Cause there's a spark in you
You just gotta ignite, the light, and let it shine
Just own the night like the 4th of July
'Cause baby you're a firework
Come on, show 'em what you're worth
Make 'em go "Oh, oh, oh"
As you shoot across the sky-y-y
Baby, you're a firework
Come on, let your colors burst
Make 'em go "Oh, oh, oh"
You're gonna leave 'em all in awe, awe, awe
You don't have to feel like a waste of space
You're original, cannot be replaced
If you only knew what the future holds
After a hurricane comes a rainbow

Maybe your reason why all the doors are closed
So you could open one that leads you to the perfect road
Like a lightning bolt, your heart will glow
And when it's time, you'll know
You just gotta ignite, the light, and let it shine
Just own the night like the 4th of July
'Cause baby you're a firework
Come on, show 'em what you're worth
Make 'em go "Oh, oh, oh"
As you shoot across the sky-y-y
Baby, you're a firework
Come on, let your colors burst
Make 'em go "Oh, Oh, Oh"
You're gonna leave 'em all in awe, awe, awe
Boom, boom, boom
Even brighter than the moon, moon, moon
It's always been inside of you, you, you
And now it's time to let it through-ough-ough
'Cause baby you're a firework
Come on, show 'em what you're worth
Make 'em go "Oh, Oh, Oh"
As you shoot across the sky-y-y
Baby, you're a firework
Come on, let your colors burst
Make 'em go "Oh, Oh, Oh"
You're gonna leave 'em all in awe, awe, awe
Boom, boom, boom
Even brighter than the moon, moon, moon
Boom, boom, boom
Even brighter than the moon, moon, moon

Op-ed- Does Sex Ed Undermine Parental Rights

I read a persuasive article that was featured in the New York Times called, "Does Sex Ed Undermine Parental Rights." It talked about how schools providing sex ed in schools is taking away the rights of parents.   The author Robert P. George takes a very strong stance on the entire issue.  He believes that it is wrong for parents to have to send their child to a school where this class could be contradicting there views morally or religiously.  He states that parents have the responsiblity to raise there children morally and religiously and the government taking those duties away is wrong  He says bluntly, "To subject children to indoctrination in deeply personal matters against their parents’ consciences is no less a violation than forcing Muslim parents to send their children to a Catholic Mass".  Part of his strategies in his article are statements like that, they are very forceful and send his message across.  Another strategy he uses is directly effecting our emotions.  He brings up " our responsiblity as parents", and our " bringing and raising our children is this world".  Although they may not sound very emotional in context they really are quite convincing.  In general I thought is his article was very effictive at proving his point and really caught my attention.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/opinion/does-sex-ed-undermine-parental-rights.html

Deafness vs hearing

I thought that this documentry was actually very interesting.  My aunt and uncle are deaf so I actually have a deep connection to what the family was going through.  While watching the movie I was sympathetic to what the family was going through and the feelings they were having.  Deaf culture is a thing that most hearing people are not exposed to, so that is why it is so hard to understand to most. I, being in the family of a deaf person am somewhat exposed to this culture. This helps me understand why the family of Heather was so on the fence about putting  the cochlear implant.  This cochlear implant would most likely take Heather out of the deaf culture.  Sure, she may be somewhat involved because her family is part of  the culture, but it would not be the same as if she was compeltely deaf herself.  Her having a family that is all deaf would also really have an effect on her hearing life and speech life. So what is really best for Heather?  I personally believe that if I was deaf myself and had a deaf daughter I would not want her to get the implant. . If I and my husband were deaf I would raise our daughter deaf and put her in the best deaf school in the country.  The only way I would  change my mind was if she asked to get it(which is what Heather did).  I would inform her on exactly what happens when they put the implant in and tell her the chances of it working .  I feel as if that would be the best choice.  You really just need to put yerself in the shoes of a deaf person.  Having a daughter born deaf and putting an implant in before they have an opinon is just a bad choice and  could affect the realtionship of the parents and child.

I believe that it is a competely different situation if the parents are NOT deaf.  If they are not deaf I see nothing wrong with getting the cochlear implant for the child. Being in the world deaf is a hard thing.  When my aunt was younger she had to deal with a lot of hatred and abuse.  Teachers called her names and treated her as if she was nothing.  Even though it is 50 years later I would never wish anything like that on to a child and especially not my child. I would get the cochlear implant as soon as possible and have my child involved in many speech and hearing classes.  I want the best life for my child, and I believe that would be the best choice.~

fearing fear

People are fearful of multiple things; from lions to spiders to heights and everything in between. I, myself am not afraid of these things.  I would jump off a clif if I had the chance, or even rub a lion under its chin. I am fearful of fear.  I HATE being scared of things.  Honestly, what does an object or a thing have over me? What makes them in charge of making me scared.  Who gave them that power? So when I find myself feeling a little scared I completely freak out.  My mind goes through a panic trying to find a way to get over it and move on from the feeling of fear.  In some ways this is a terrible thing, but in other ways it is a good thing.  I mean, I have trained my mind so well to where I can competely demolish my fear and move on.  Sure, it sounds incredible but in reality it is tiring.  It involves so much control and concentration by the time the fear is gone I want to take a nap. ZzzzZzZzZ

How I write...

How I write ....

First I must obtain the proper materials.  Items needed:  paper, pencil, big eraser, and if I'm really feeling crazy maybe a dictionary.  Without any one of these materials no magic can happen. After I get all of these materials I need to find a nice quiet or loud place depending on what I am writing. For exmple, if I am writing a poem a loud, crazy place works best.  If I am writing an essay or important piece of any kind it needs to be quiet with a little bit on music in the background. I'm not sure why the sounds in the background mean so much, but I do know that they mean A LOT.  After I find a place I need to have a  cozy blanket on my lap and a little snack. A little brain food always does the trick.  After I get comfortable the magic starts.  Ideas come through my head at a mile a minute and the hard job I have to do next..  to put them on paper :)

Invisible Eden

For my non-fiction book I read a book called Invisible Eden. To be honest I really didn't like it that much. It had a good story line but seemed to go on forever. It was about a wealthy woman who was murdered in her house; found on the floor nursing her baby girl.  She had been stabbed in the back by an unknown suspect.  Thoughout the book Christa (the main character who was murdered) was explained to the fullest.  The author explained all of the men she had been with and basiclly how she lived her life. It was as if she was being dissected in a science lab. Her insecurities that she had all her life were explained in the story and exactly why she became that way.  It was somewhat intersting to see everything about this woman's life and exactly how she had to live.   For example, Christa was a very damaged person.  Her parents were never really in love and her father was always cheating on her mother. Christa felt as if everything in her parents life was her fault.  I could relate to this completely because when I was younger I felt as if my parents bad relationship was my fault.  I came to realize that it wasn't. Christa never had the realization, and I have sympathy for her. Her parents failing relationship also had a huge impact on her relations with multiple men.  She had never settled down before her death, and never let anyone get too close. She always had her guard up, and it ended up eating her alive, and injuring her heart...
One thing I really liked about the book was the lack of transitions.  At one moment they were talking about Christa's childhood, then the next they were talking about the District Attorney's office.  It made me have to stop and think about what was going on. As I got into the book more they started putting suspects under the microscope. No matter how hard police tried, they had a hard time figuring out who did this terrible thing to Christa. It seemed as if no matter how many leads they had they could never do anything with them. There were not arrests and no evidence.  Everything was wiped clean.  It seemed as if the murder didn't even happen. As I kept reading the book made me extrmely frustrated. The book ended with the murder unsolved.!  All of the stories about Christa and her men were all for nothing.  Sure, it was interesting to be looking in on her life, but they never found the person that did it.  I know that that is reality, but it was still kind of unfortunate for Christa and her family.  They had to deal with all of the press and hardships, and in the end there was no justice.   Oh well, just another unsolved mystery.... 

Sexual Character Discussed

Mary Wollenstonecraft's, "The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Chararcter Discussed" is written with a great amount of intelligence that was hard to understand at times. She proves her points by her intense thoughts and opinons.  The fact that it was written so long ago, really made me realize that at that time men and women were very different. Women were treated more as children, to supply pleasure to the man. She explains through her writting how much respect was expected from a woman to a man. One line that really caught my attention was , " and if then women do not resign the arbitrary power of beauty-- they will prove that they have less mind than man."  That sent the message that more beauty = less power and mind.  I found that very interesting because I'm sure back then that could have been the case, but now in 2011 it really doesn't fit. Although I found a lot of difference between her opinions and mine there was some I found the same.  I am very traditional when it comes to a marriage.  I was raised with my mom having supper on the table around the same time every night, and the house being clean.  Its a stretch to say that women are extremely inferior to males, but in some sense I believe that.  I believe that women have certain responsibilites to their men, but Mary takes it a little furter then I could ever.

Is my Brain Really That Important?

Part of me believes that this entire essay is completly a myth similar to the lockless monster, the other part of me believes there is some knowledge behind it.  In the begaining its talking about these readers who are having a hard time reading long articles and seem to be getting destracted.  I feel as if the concept they have in their head pointing their fingers at media is just false.  As people of the 2000's we are reading more then ever before.  How would that cause us to lose concentration faster?  I just don't see the thought process behind that. How could staring at a screen reading articles be bad, is it any different then staring at a piece of paper?   "  Once I was a scuba diver in a sea of words, now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski. "  Could that possibly be because the world is moving faster than it ever has? Like I said, the other part of me thinks that computers could be a bad thing for our brains. That opinion roots from computers taking away creativity. For example when I type a story or essay on  the computer it seems to lose my voice. It doesn't even sound like I wrote it. When I use a pen and some paper my  voice fills the pages. I could never write a poem on the computer because the ideas just wouldn't come like they would on paper. So what to think? Wait until computers become everything we do, then we will see exactly what happens. :)

Dreaming of Skunks

"Skunk Dreams", by Louise Erdrich is an intimate writing showing the comfort and love that is felt from routine and past.  It starts with a story of the main character getting stuck sleeping next to a skunk at age fourteen.  She explains the anxiety and terror that she had sleeping next to the skunk.  The vicious animal left its scent on her body.  She then starts to analyze her thoughts about dreams and death starting with the skunk.  She thinks about what skunks dream about , and then human dreaming and death.   One line I found very interesting was, " I want something of the self on who I have worked so hard to survive the loss of the body." This caught my attention because it always seems we want more. Why can't she just accept the long and lovely life she was to live. It seems as if we always want to get more and more, the more we have the more we want. As the essay continues, she then explains her moving to New Hampshire and how unsatisfying it was. She dreamed of home and it seemed as if she was trapped in a world that wasn't hers. Nature was her natural high and she wanted to feel that high more and more as she was away from it longer. It truely prooved that "home is where the heart is". No matter how much a person says they want to leave home and never come back, there is always a point when one must return home. It has a comfort indescribable. No matter how hard she tried to get the same feeling from home, she was never fully satisfied. I feel as if that is what life is made of. We always want to be satisfied and love the life we live. Without that satisfaction, we aren't even "truly" living.

Updike and Sontag

"Whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards." A quote by writer Susan Sontag should be continously looked at as completly rude and a stab for what America in my opinion should stand for. When a person enters into your home with a bomb attached to their hip that would be the definintion of cowardly.  Sure, throwing a bomb into my house is wrong and disrespectful, but when the person has the bomb attached to his or herself that cuts a totally different throat.  That is saying, hey I love myself so much that I would risk my ten cent life just to get rid of yours that you say is worth living.  Susan seems to be saying that we in someway deserved what we got and that what they did is not any worse than the things that we have done by bombing Japan. To say that what we did in Japan was wrong is at least an obvious thought process, but to say that the people of the United States needed a wake up call like that is unexcusable. I am not aware of exactly who was in the World Trade Center, but I am certain that no one in that building deserved to die because of a mistake ( in some opinons) that was made when we bombed Japan or attacked any other countries.  
John Updike in his piece seemed to have a more classical opinion on the whole situation. From the over-used stories to the picture in my head of the falling towers; his opinion seemed dull and not fully thought out. His vocab choices were fabulous, but the words only seemed to make the picture in my head go from black and white to the colors of the tears falling and the fading blue of the East River. "  The other side has the abstractins; we have only the mundane duties of survivors-- to pick up the pieces, to bury the dead, to take more precautions, to go on living."  Although I have harsh critism of Updike and his writing this quote is pure beauty. Truthful yet mysterious making my eyes open wider to his opinions and thoughts. 

Mara Beck? Who is that?

The truth is -- I am just an ordinary girl



My everyday life:
In the life of Mara Beck everyday is pretty complicated. My parents are divorced so I have to go from house to house.  My mom lives in Lodi,while my dad lives in Mcfarland which calls for a lot of driving and stress.  Although the whole situation calls for a lot of stress, I would never trade it for anything.  Having my parents divorced has allowed me to have two completely different places to lay my head down at night.  My mom lives in a pretty country house with apple trees and flowers blooming everywhere, while my dad lives in a huge house in the middle of town.  Having them divorced has also let me have a couple more loving family members.  I have a step brother named Clayton, who I consider one of my best friends.  I also have a little brother and little sister, which are my everything.  I would do anything for them, even if it meant throwing everything away. It has also let me have a step mom and dad.  My step mom and I have had some opposite opinions on life, but in the end it has pretty much been okay.  My step dad means a lot to me because he has pushed me to do a lot of new things in life.  Although my step parents mean a lot to me, so do my real parents.  My dad is my hero, and is who I go to when I have any problems or need advice.  My mom is more of my friend, and a person I can hangout with whenever I need a break.  If you could not tell, my family means everything to me...

Who am I really?
If I could describe myself I would use the words:
laid back, honest, caring, loving, silly, responsible, respectful, funny, colorful, truthful, passionate, opiniated, daring, nervous

Goals:
My number one goal in life is joining the Airforce.  I am planning on enlisting this summer, and would love if it ends up taking me around the world. People say I am crazy for deciding to enlist, but these people really don't know who I am.  Anyone who really knows me knows that this is what I am dreaming about, and that the Airforce is meant for me.   I am really not exactly postive what I would like to do in the Airforce, but I am looking at jobs from working on planes to communicating with other countries.  Besides the Airforce I would love if I could go to college, and find a job I love.  Everyone is always complaining about how much they hate their jobs, so I would really love to find one that I love and have fun at.

Random Facts about Me :
- I love diet pepsi
- I have a dog named chewy named after the Starwars character
- I love the sun, if its out I'm out
- I watch Gilmore Girls religiously
- I love to shop, I go to the mall five times a month
- Designer Purses all the way
- I can write a poem in seconds. ( maybe not seconds, about a minute)
- I get about 11 magazines in the mail
- I dream of going skydiving
- I like the smell of cigarettes, but think they are discusting
- I love disney movies
-Mashed potatoes are great with hot sauce, I could eat them everyday
- I wish I could live on the beach
- I love old navy flip flops
- I could on forever with the list, but I won't.


The truth is-- I am not always an ordinary girl.