ThanksGiving

This year around Thanksgiving we are all doing that tedious process of remembering every nitty, gritty detail of life we are thankful for. This year I have come to be thankful for something that others may seem as selfish but that does not really matter to me. We all know we are thankful to be alive, thankful for our friends and family, thankful to have the things we have, and so on. Yet, does anyone ever take the time out of their day to remind themselves to be thankful for the person they are. Or are people not really happy with the person they are so maybe they are not that thankful?

Regardless, though, this Thanksgiving, not only am I thankful for other people and what they are to me but I am thankful for the person I am in life presently. At other times in life I was never as sure of myself to admit that I am actually proud of the person I am. When I was younger I used to fake my face and pretend to be a person who was who they wanted to be. Right now, though, as we are all sitting around our steaming plates of turkey and mashed potatoes, reminising about everything besides ourselves that we are grateful for and in debted to, I would like to be different. I would like, for once, to make the bold statement "Yes, as I am grateful and lucky for everyone else and everything in my life, ultimately I am grateful for myself for the person I am and the person I am striving to be".

So as you are repeatedly going over the same old things that are mentioned to be thankful for, remember yourself. Look inward and remember that, no matter how much help you have received from others, you have gotten yourself to the place you are at today. Be grateful and happy for the way you are and if you are not be happy that you have the time to change who you are. Become a better person and be thankful you want to become that person. Do not wait for New Year's Eve to roll around so you can make that resolution to be a greater person, to be someone you can be thankful for next year. Make that pact to yourself now and in front of the guests sitting around your dinner table so that they can help you become who you want to be.


Happy Thanksgiving!

First read: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/ a/2007/10/24/notes102407.DTL

My paper (written for assignment, not all reaction):

Mark Morford in this recent piece about how “dumb” the next generation, or rather my generation is, takes his criticism to a different level. In other articles of his, he seemed to be more veered towards taking one side of an argument and was very critical. In this piece, though, through his sarcasm and bold statements, he looks at opposite angles of the argument. He realizes that the decreasing mentality of teenagers may not just be because they are a “big pile of idiots” but because society and government are making them that way. This makes his column more believable and obviously a bit likeable for people of my apparent stupid generation.

Strong similes are also found in this article which makes it even more compelling. Statements like, “It's a bit like the melting of the polar ice caps.” And "It's like weighing a calf twice a day, but never feeding it" are incredible ways of showing how society is really not progressing anywhere. We are almost at a standstill in development, but the caps are increasingly melting. Slowly but surely. These devices Morford uses promotes his ideas to the reader more interestingly than when he simply criticizes.

Morford arises some very daring statements that hit home in his article. His blunt statements which are bolded are effective in offending but making their point known to the reader. He is then able to go on and defend with examples how and why the future generation is so dumb. One issue with his piece, though, is when he states (or rather his friend states),

It's gotten so bad that, as my friend nears retirement, he says he is very seriously considering moving out of the country so as to escape what he sees will be the surefire collapse of functioning American society in the next handful of years due to the absolutely irrefutable destruction, the shocking — and nearly hopeless — dumb-ification of the American brain. It is just that bad.

The problem present in this quote is the idea that America is actually functioning right now. Are we really? What about all those school shootings occurring, what about the effortless war we have been involved in for the past several years, what about the fact that I can not safely walk around my school without getting harassed about showing identification, what about the broadway strikes occurring, what about the homeless problems we have, what about the millions of teen parents we have that can not take care of themselves let alone a child? Are we really a “functioning American society” right now? I guess if you count living in a state of fear and hatred of one another functioning than sure we are functioning wonderfully. Maybe Morford’s buddy should have moved out a long time ago or been taught a lesson of what is and what is not functioning.

Hopefully, in future generations this dumbing down mentality will actually be beneficial. Perhaps instead of fighting a real war in which people lose their ACTUAL lives, our future “stupid, ignorant” leaders would introduce stupid ideas like having a Halo tournament or laser tag fights to see which nation is the strongest. Hey, isn’t that better than tossing around real grenades and bullets and human lives like we are doing now? I think “a populace far too ignorant to know how to properly manage any of it” might actually be a good change or no change at all. What it comes down to is that if you want to destroy something, it has to be stable and intact in the first place. We are not a real managed and stable society no matter how patriotic or how much you say the opposite. So really what is it that our ignorant generation can destroy? At least most of us are so involved in blogging and video games that we do not bring destruction in the first place. Of course we do not bring much change to the way things are but show me someone who is, show me a war that we actually won because I will show you how we lost. Maybe our generation will start initiating change when previous generations show us a world we should be proud to be a part of.

Social Issue = Mental Illness

Not too sure what this blog is supposed to touch upon so I guess I will just quickly sum up the presentation I gave in class. Basically I talked about how mental illness affects one's ability to parent as we are shown in The Glass Castle. More importantly, though, I showed how incredibly close drug use and violence is with people with mental health issues and depression. The reasons for this are obvious, I think, anyway. Violence and drugs are both escapes, quick momentary answers to the illness and darkness. A way to self-medicate but also self-destruct and hurt those around you, even if one does not mean to.

In the memoir The Glass Castle, it shows depression and the violence that ensues in town as a vicious cycle, "it put all the miners in bad moods and they came home and took it out on their wives, who took it out on their kids, who took it out on other kids". This, through the eyes of young Jeanette, represents the cycle she thinks is taking place. Frustrating work pumps out depressed, angered dads who in turn frustrate their wives who throw their problems at their kids who become violent to one another. It seems never-ending and a hard cycle to escape, especially in Welch. Yet I think that is why people should be taught better coping skills. I am no exception from this because when I am angry at something else, it has the capability to carry with me into conversations and actions dealing with other people. We just need to focus on the problem and take care of it so that it does not overwhelm our ability to interact with innocent bystanders.

The mother in this memoir is one of the worst sufferers of the family of a mental illness. While Rex "suffers" from alcoholism, the mother is stunted by some internal unhappiness resulting from either bipolar disorder or simply depression. Most likely bipolar. On page 207, Jeanette admits of her mother "At times she'd be happy for days on end.... But the positive thoughts would give way to negative thoughts, and the negative thoughts seemed to swoop into her mind the way a big flock of black crows takes over the landscape." I thought this was the best way to describe a mental illness and leads me right into the stance I take on this issue.

People are so quick to dismiss someone suffering from a mental illness as either lazy or just plain "sad". They have a lack of knowledge about mental instabilities so I find that people can easily dismiss these problems as real conflicts in someone's life. Even Jeanette in the story says she barely feels bad for her mom, if she does at all. Clearly in life people do not realize how incredibly enveloping depression and other mentally illnesses can be on people. We think (and I have thought it too) that we all have issues, traumas, and, in the big picture, life to deal with. We fail to realize it is ten times harder for the person with too little serotonin or dopemine in their brain to be able to cope with hard times. Or even just with life. It is easy for a depressed person to put into perspective how insignificant and pointless their life is or even other peoples lives are. Once in this mindset, these people can't make it out of bed in the morning rather than making it through a work or school day. I think more people need to be educated on the matter of mental illness rather than just tossing it aside.

One issue that arose in class was how people failed to sympathize for the mother in the memoir but would sympathize for an alcoholic dad. I have issue with this but also at the same time realize I have done it through my life too. Having an alcoholic dad when I was younger and a mom who just disappeared one day when I was about seven, I grew up in hatred of them. I had loved my mom to pieces until the day I realized she wanted nothing to do with me. As time went on and my father passed away, I found myself hating myself for not ever coming to terms with him. For as much as I hated him, I was angry at myself for not attempting to understand him. For a while before he died and definitely when he passed, hate turned into feeling bad for him. He did to my family what his family did to him and I should have gave him more of a shot when he tried to come back into my life but I was young and naive and being told that he was neglectful so often that I believed. He was neglectful but maybe he didn't mean to be. Anyway I do not hate my dad now but I pity him and feel bad and a bit angry at myself. As for my mom, though, I still have this extreme hate for her and misunderstanding. No matter what I do or what I am told about her I can not get past the hatred. I do not feel sorry for her even though my foster mom thinks I should. She says she must have had problems if she so easily gave up four beautiful children and I guess I can see that yet still I harbor these emotions of just how could she do that. Just like I guess the people in class have thought about Jeanette's mother. But we can not do that, we can not think like that. People with mental illness are trapped by those "crows and negative thoughts" that occupy their minds we have to be more open-minded about the issue and realize it is an illness: you can not just get over it.

The Things They Carried

In The Things They Carried, O' Brien shows how important it is to take the memories that are buried inside of you and carry them to the surface. This is critical so your story can grip others and make them aware; but, also, because you are finally able to find an outlet for the events you may have not fully come to terms with. Writing a story allows an author to analyze and truly figure out what they got out of or who they became because of tribulation they got through, such as war.
The process of story writing and telling has the capacity to take a situation that makes you uncomfortable and possibly make you more at ease with it. O' Brien states:
I'm forty-three years old, and a writer now, still dreaming Linda alive in exactly the same way... she's mostly made up, with a new identity and a new name, like the man who never was. Her real name doesn't matter... I loved her and then she died. And yet right her, in the spell of memory and imagination, I can still see her as if through ice, as if I'm gazing into some other world, a place where there are no brain tumors and no funeral homes, where there are no bodies at all... I'm young and happy. I'll never die. I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story. (245-246)
This passage, although lengthy, seems to sum up why retelling stories, however true or not, is so critical for some people (maybe all). This outlet is not limited to writers; it is meant for everyone whoever opens their mouth and says they have something to tell. O' Brien says, "in the spell of memory and imagination..." he recreates the person he was once in love with. He is able to make her alive and therefore he can remember her life and pass it on. As well as passing other people's lives on and making them important, he also will continue to live on in his own novels, even after he has passed. Therefore he has, so to say, "left his footprints" in this world and to many, including myself, that is extremely crucial.


O' Brien uses techniques in his writing such as strong language and symbolism to more effectively represent his theme and make a more lasting impression on the reader. In one death, specifically (Kiowa's) he retells it and makes it known that his location of death was a "shit field". He does not censor himself for the sake of the readers but allows the true nature of the location to come alive. Also the "shit field" is symbolic in that the war in which they were fighting had come to such measures as to have them fight in such conditions. Irony also comes into play here because the field was an actual place where sewage went therefore the name fits it well. The fact that Kiowa's death occured here also, indirectly highlights how good of a man Kiowa was. He died in the exact opposite manner in which he should have. For example, if Kiowa was an evil man, it may have been more accepted that he died in this manner. But Kiowa was a "fine human being, a devout Baptist" (163) which is more powerful to the reader when they find out how he died. The war takes honest people away in such horrific events and there is really no need for it.

Lastly, I believe O'Brien would look at this story (if he had not written it) as a true war story because it evokes feeling in the reader. He states himself that, "I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth... What stories can do...is make things present. I can look at things I never looked at... I can make myself feel" (180). In light of this quote that O'Brien said, I believe he would take this story and recognize it for its truth. Timmy (or Tim)'s story reinvents the war in a way the reader can see, touch, hear, smell, and, ultimately, be there themselves (even though they never have been or will be). It creates this utter hopelessness and brings to life events that may have happened to someone, some where. It does not matter if it is 100% true; it matters if somebody can sit down and read it and say "Wow. I can relate." or just lets someone feel something they would never have to feel in actuality.