Burned Out....

This is my post that can be about anything. It's halfway through the semester and I am sure that every student is starting to feel this way. I think Professor Webb can even tell, he is letting us write a blog post on whatever we want. I have always wondered how do we stop students from feeling like this? There are some of us.... myself included, that go to school all year around. Some take summer classes, and are seriously in school all year around and their longest break in the year is winter break. Many college students don't go anywhere for spring break, but even if they do most are loaded down with homework. We would think that professors wouldn't want us to get this burned out feeling. Over break I have 3 projects, I have 3 due this week. The burn out rate for college students is extremely high during the spring semester because students get spring fever. This spring fever can help to bring out procrastination in students as well. I think since the month of February started I have seen 40-50 Facebook status's about spring break, it was still a month away at that time.
Now don't get me wrong I love the topic of food in ENGL 1100 and I want to do something to help the cause but I feel that my brain is just circulating the same ideas now. It is so hard to be passionate for a cause when you feel like you can only bring 5 ideas to the table. I love to be creative and help out but I feel like my brain is so fried.
I think this is something that people experience on a regular basis in every aspect of life. I think people get burned out from their jobs, and get burned out from everyday life. I think thats why we all set our sights so high on vacations, because it is our chance to escape. This is something I think about on a regular basis.

The Jungle Ch 6-13

I really liked that I could continue reading this book without any gaps in knowledge.
I really can't believe that the family had no idea that they were getting swindled. It took their little old lady neighbor to tell them. They now know that their rent will be closer to 20 dollars. We would kill for 20 dollar rent now a days. Jurgis and his family also find out that their new house is made of not so good materials and that it is 15 years old. The fact that Jurgis's wife and his son have to get jobs to even attempt to support the family is crazy. It is because the major wa
ge earners in past families have been killed or become seriously ill. That doesn't say good things about the working conditions in Packingtown.
You see Jurgis's family begin to get sick and not be able to take work off in the start of chapter 7. They have to keep going to work because they need to be able to afford their house. The working conditions only get worse in Packingtown because of the snow and the lack of heat. This causes so many men to become alcoholics. To me this seems like s
uch a bad idea, like why would they want to do this if they know that money is already tight for them. It makes me happy to see that Jurgis will resist the temptation so he can provide a great life for his wife.
In chapter 8 Jurgis's daughter Marjia begins to date Tamoszius, he is a fiddle player and uses his music to liven up this families life. It helps uplift the family and helps them to forget the poverty that they are facing on a daily basis. As the courtship continues, Tamoszius proposes to Marjia and she says yes. They will live with the family in the attic. I know that the time this is something that many people did, but I could not imagine being newly married and still living with my parents. What I think causes this is Marjia's factory that she works at closes down. Also Jurgis gets a cut on his hours. This is something that so many of us can relate to. It's hard when a family member goes through this. They all join unions. To me unions can be a good and a bad thing.
In chapter 9 Jurgis begins to learn english and he will then become a U.S. citizen. This is great because now they cannot look at him as an immigrant he is now in my own opinion their equal. He was before but now they cannot look down upon him, they never had that right but now they should have no excuse. Sadly they still take advantage of him and tell him how to vote and who to vote for. He get's paid two dollars for his trouble but this is not a good thing. He doesn't find out until after he goes through all the voting that he had been used and abused by the man. He learns that his company makes meat that is not healthy for the people, that they are using sick cow meat.
Chapter 10 Jurgis finally gets a backbone and goes to the land lord and asks for all the hidden expenses. He gets the breakdown of all that he spends on expenses for his house. The seasons change, all it does is rain in the spring and in the summer the factory is extremely hot. I really hate how Packingtown works because Jurgis's daughter gets her job back and loses it 2 months later. I mean what the heck? This girl is a hard worker but why not just keep her on. His wife hates where she works because she works with a lot of prostitutes. Jurgis and his wife have another child, a baby boy. They already had 12 mouths to feed, why not make it 13. Ona has to return a week after having a baby, this will kill her health and the baby boys.
In chapter 11 they learn that banks aren't always safe for their money. Marjia puts her money in the bank and then she learns that their is a run on the bank. So for her to save her money in the safest way possible she sews her money into her clothes.
I feel bad for Jurgis and his family in Chapter 12 because Jurgis sprains his ankle and can't work for 3 months, this has got to be hard on his family. He begins to take out his anger on his family. They send Jonas's little boys to go work in the newspaper areas so that they can learn the tricks of the trade.
In the final chapter I have to read, chapter 13, I think it is sad that most of the family is happy when a family member dies. Only one person is sad, I understand that this person was a cripple, but they should be sad that he has passed. Jurgis will not help pay for the funeral. I had respect for him in the beginning but slowly I am losing respect for him.

The Jungle

So this saved as a draft instead of posting last night... oops... sorry guys

The way the book starts is it gives a background of Jurgis and his family. He came to Chicago from Lithuania, while in Lithuania his wife Ona's father had died and left the family in a large amount of debt. The family had lost their farm and had very little savings, this is when they began to speak of traveling to America. Something that was very interesting to me is that Jurgis and h
is extended family (12 of them in total) all came to America. Jurgis finds a Lithuanian man that he had heard had made a great fortune, and this mans name is Jokubas. Really he was struggling to get by, he directed them to an overcrowded boarding house. From there he set out to go get a job. To me this is really interesting because we can see that the working conditions from the beginning were not even that great in America which immigrants thought of as the place of dreams. Sinclair shows how that this fantasy was so childish and that they didn't really know what it was like.
Something that I can relate back to our class is the start of chapter 3. This is where we see Jurgis taking a tour of Packington. He see's cattle all put together and living in horrible conditions just waiting to be killed at the end of the day. It talks about how spoiled and diseased meat is snuck into the actual meat that people are eating. This scares me because how do I know that this still isn't happening today? It honestly made me want to become a vegetarian. Jurgis works for 12 hours a day and makes a little bit over two dollars and he was happy with this. You can also see Americans taking advantage of the immigrants by when they went to go look at apartments the ones they see isn't as nice as the one that is pictured in the advertisement. They did this without Jurgis and they signed a rental for it and it shows just how mean people were then to these workers that do not know about their rights. It's crazy to read because when the lawyer is the guys friend you know that they are going to take advantage of you. Jurgis makes a friend that tells him all about the corruption in Packington. I think this is Sinclair showing America through true eyes.

New RSO

Becoming an RSO:

• Follow the RSO registration steps in the handbook
• Name
• Logo
• Faculty Advisor
• Elect officers
• Leadership positions
• Constitution/bylaws
• There is a constitution layout for WMU constitutions attached
• Equal opportunity statement, we don't discriminate
• We will have to re-register the RSO every fall 

Educate People: 

• Invite people to come give talks
• Educational events
• Can get funding through WSA allocations, partners with them or CAB and will get the name out there of the RSO and event
• Colleges in the US where students go to dining halls, they save leftover food and provide it to those in the community in need. 
• This can help WMU to become even more sustainable... by having less waste

Things to do:

• Make people aware
• Food pantry on campus
• Other food needs & other issues in the community
• Create an RSO
• What is being done?
• What more can we do?
• Food waste
• Food availability

Cajas de carton

I can relate to the beginning of the article because for a summer I took my campers to the strawberry fields and you never really see anyone out picking them in August. It makes me sad that the workers work sun up to sun down and barely make any money. These are the people who work the hardest and yet they make like no money. It was 12 hours a day 7 days a week every week, how are these fair labor conditions?
It is really sad how they move out of their shack and into a labor camp, when you hear labor camps it will trigger the memory of World War II and labor camps. They had holes in the walls where they live, his father would plug them. It hard to read and know that this is something that is going on in our world today. These working conditions are things that occur today in 2014. They also had only one mattress, this is something that we as Americans don't think of, we think that it only happened during the great depression, but it is happening now as well.
The working conditions where they work, man I don't know how they do it. The workers are doing work out in weather over 100 degrees. Water makes them sick if you drink it so fast, this is
because it is so hot. Something I didn't take into account is that these workers are young and they aren't going to school. We are taught now that you can't really get anywhere in the work force without a college education. When he got to go to school it was mid November. As an educator this makes me so sad, because by mid November these classrooms have formed a community and they have started learning and building on the foundations that the students have. When Francisco comes into school almost 2 months late you can imagine how far behind he will be.

Modest Proposal: Lack of Healthy Food

Disclaimer: One of the biggest problems that our class has discussed is the lack of healthy food. We were challenged to write in the style of Johnathan Swift's Modest Proposal on one of the problems identified. This is a satire!

We know that the increase of these fast food places has helped to increase the lack of the healthy food that people will eat. So many people will pick more of the fast food because it is cheaper. Also this lack of healthy food will help to cause the people who do not eat healthy will become obese. Well I propose a way to fix this is to increase the price of these fast food options because this will then help us to push the people to start to eat healthier. If we rase the price of a McDonalds cheese burger to 12 dollars then this will help people to go out and buy healthier food. Or if we make the dollar menu at McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell etc. a 10 dollar meal and jack the prices up from there then it will cause all the healthy food to be eaten. I know so many people in America and around the world love fast food, I mean it is right there all the time. But if we raise the prices in the Fast Food industry then we will be able to eliminate fast food places all together.
Yes this will kill millions of jobs, but now it will force those people to go out and get jobs. If they refuse to get jobs then we can take away all benefits, and by all benefits I really do mean ALL of them. This will force them to get jobs or a college degree. Ultimately raising the price of food in the Fast Food industry will help us to get rid of all of the people that are too lazy to do anything with their life. This will reduce the population size significantly! I mean we are running out of space on the earth aren't we? This means that we will have enough resources again and we will no longer be abusing our earth. Also with obesity on the rise this will help slim our country down. So what if you love cheeseburgers, maybe in the end we will tax all fatty foods just so the country can get skinny. If there are those that do not want to give up the fast food and will continue to pay the prices they will eventually run out of money and resources and die. This will also help to make our population smaller so that we can take care of our earth.

This was really hard to write, I felt like I was being very mean.

Guatemala - Malnutrition

Living in the United States today we really don't think about those in need around us. We don't think about the fact that in other countries there are children and adults that are not getting enough food. It only will cross our minds when we see a World Vision advertisement for children in need. There is another need out there besides not having enough food, there is a problem in Guatemala where the children are not getting the right kind of food. Malnutrition, these children are eating but their bones are not getting calcium for the children to have strong bones. Half of the children in Guatemala had chronic malnutrition. Some areas within Guatemala the chronic malnutrition rate is as high as 90%. Guatemala is a very prosperous country is terms of gross domestic product, so why are so many people malnourished?

In 2008 nearly half of the children that are under the age of 5 are stunted in their growth. This issue is close to my heart because my cousins are adopted from Russia and they were stunted as children. The large Mayan cultures in Guatemala are the ones that have the most malnutrition. Yet the largest hunger hot spots are in the places where the civil war was the most intense. Many would say that Guatemala is not just one big country but multiple countries. They would be divided into th
e rich areas and the poor areas. In these poorer regions the malnutrition rates are much larger.

I do agree with the article, malnutrition is not made public unless they have the right picture to guilt people. Yet the underlying issue is poverty! The people of Guatemala do not have the money to get the access to the correct food. The rich communities are the ones that do not have high malnutrition rates. They also don't distribute food to these areas that are deserving. The areas that are in the most need are so isolated that many people even in the country of Guatemala do not know that this issue is even present.

A Modest Proposal

I was disgusted by the ideas that were presented in A Modest Proposal by JonathanSwift. In this satire he proposes that to solve the issue of children being a burden to their parents in poor families we should fatten up the undernourished children and feed them to the rich Irish land owners. Who does this? Who in their right mind would ever think that this is okay?!?!?! Swift goes on to propose that children of poor men should be sold into the meat market at a year old. Sweeney Todd much? I think that even just these two ideas alone are disturbing.

Swift goes on to say that his proposal will combat overpopulation and unemployment, sparing families and the expense of child bearing. He also says that selling children into the meat market will help give these poor families a little extra money. To me this is awful, he is promoting cannibalism and he is promoting selling children for money. How is this a good practice? How is this promoting a good life style? He is encouraging people to eat the children and sell them! We abolished the selling of humans when we abolished slavery, and we thought it was bad then, but swift is saying it should be okay, and that if a person needs to that they can sell their own children.

The author also thinks that this will help family mortality, that husbands will love their wives more. Uhhhh this man had a child with his wife and then sold it, how is this going to make him love her more? I really don't get that. Swift also states that this will help the families to value their children, they are selling the kids because they can't afford them, and then are going to eat them. How does this create value? I mean I guess it gives these children a monetary value if their parents were to sell them, but how would it make them feel valued as a person? It really won't. It will make the children fear for their lives if the family ever falls below or near the poverty line. To me the proposals will stir up fear in these children rather than value.

Overall this really upset me and got me really heated, my boyfriend and I even had a huge conversation over this and how crazy it is.

Loaves and Fishes

I have heard about this organization long before taking this class. The mission of Loaves and Fishes is to help end hunger in the community. I think this is a great trip for our class to make because we have already talked about how at the end of the night places that serve food should give what's left away. We would agree with loaves and fishes in the sense that they want to provide people with good high quality food.
This program has been around since 1982, I think this is something that can benefit the Kalamazoo community, and I'm sure it was a very big help during the recession a few years ago. Something that I really like is that Loaves & Fishes has a program called Grocery Pantry. In 2012, Loaves & Fishes fed nearly 127,000 people through the Grocery Pantry Program. There are 5 different programs in total that I can find on the website under the get help tab.
The main way that Loaves & Fishes gets the food that they distribute is through donations from the community. They receive either food donations or money donations. They are still able to give away 2 million pounds of food annually, and all of this food that they give away are things that are higher quality foods. The best form of donation that Loaves & Fishes can receive is money, it helps them to keep the lights on and keep their buildings staffed. Also as a pre service teacher I found it intriguing to see that there are lessons and quizzes for teachers to use in their classrooms about poverty.
As I stated early I had heard about Loaves and Fishes before, I have donated money to them through many Greek Life organizations. I am going to find this experience very insightful because I will finally be able to see where it is that my money is going. It is a great way to give back, even if you don't feel like you are doing that much you can make a great impact on the life of someone else.

Dinner of Trimalchio

To be extremely honest... I struggled with reading this and staying interested in it. I found myself lost for a good portion of the reading. Overall this passage is about a group of people going to dinner at Trimalchios house.  Trimalchio is not nice towards his guests's he picks his teeth at the table... with a silver toothpick of course! He plays a game in the middle of the feast, and yet no one really seems to care that their host doesn't know what manners are. Trimalchio distracts his guests with all his flashy decorations in his feast. I think that the guest have to wait for Trimalchio to catch up in courses..... this means that he stops the meal for himself, I mean what kind of host does that? Reading that, yes I had to look up some meanings, but I was really upset by this fact.

I found it really cool that one of the courses was a different food with a zodiac sign. I mean I am a libra and it was a bunch of cake and desserts. I love cake and that just was something that made me smile. But this theme of zodiac signs seems to continue through out the entire courses of the feast. This was something we don't really seem to hear about a lot of zodiac signs. 

Mainly I felt that the whole feast was for Trimalchio to show off the fact that he has money and lots of servants. The longer the dinner continued the more I hated Trimalchio! In chapter 49 he throws wine in the face of others and says that they can have whichever wine they want. He also starts to try to talk about myths with his guests and it shows how much he isn't educated compared to the rest of them. He also gets his mythology wrong again in chapter 52... I really think this guy is just trying to show off but isn't really able to do it well.
I feel that his guest just sat there and humored him with his over done feast, but no one had the heart to tell him that he was being a horrible host and making a fool of himself.
I found this really awesome link that explains much of the dinner, it even goes through it course by course! Enjoy guys!