Joyas Voladoras

Joyas Voladoras literally means Flying Jewels in Spanish. Brain Doyle wrote this essay that has a meaning that can be... manipulated.  This essay perfectly captures how a heart pains and loves. I love his opening, "Consider the Hummingbird for a long moment." Meaning that you shouldn't rush through the essay. It makes you curious on why you should take your time on concentrating on such a small insignificant creature. He goes on to explain how hummingbirds have an incredibly fast heart rate that makes their life short and brief, yet adventurous. In contrast, whales however have big, heavy hearts that take in so much. And so he writes, "But we know this: the animals with the largest hearts in the world generally travel in pairs, and their penetrating moaning cries, their piercing yearning tongue, can be heard underwater for miles and miles." What Doyle is saying is that even though these magnificent large creatures are not "flying jewels", that are adventurous, they have a longer and potentially a better life. Whales generally travel in pairs so they have a better support system, others that want to hear their cries. My favorite part of his essay was when he said: “So much held in a heart in  lifetime.  So much held in a heart in day, and hour, a moment.  We are utterly open with no one, in the end–not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend.  We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart.  Perhaps we must.  Perhaps we could not bear to be so naked, for fear of a constantly harrowed heart.  When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched by force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall.  You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman’s second glance, a child’s apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words I have something to tell you, a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mother’s papery ancient hand in the thicket of your hair, the memory of your father’s voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children.” We're meant to experience life deeply. We are meant to get hurt and so we try to shield ourselves form the pain. As the hummingbird, that only works for a while before it all comes crashing down.  We have to move and go on in life with all those scars of sorrow, but what about the ones of joy and love- real love. They are there and that's what helps you keep going. So buckle up; life has a lot to throw your way. 

Hitler vs Mother Teresa

A man capable of killing 6 million Jews in vain is one who was difficult to find someone of equal opposite. Yet it was ever so obvious since this person was one many of us have heard about. Mother Teresa dedicated herself to better the world. Mother Teresa showed compassion for those who were less fortunate than she was. She gave them food, lifted their spirits, and helped them survive. She established hospices and hospitals for the sick and dying, starting in Calcutta, India. She opened up orphanages all around the world. She started "The Missionaries of Charity" in 1950 to love and care for those persons nobody was prepared to look after in Calcutta, helping people in the slums. She believed in God and did most of her work in his name, promoting Christianity. So, unlike Hitler,  Mother perfectly displayed selflessness and devotion and we must follow her good-hearted nature to make the world that much better. Mother won this battle for sure.

Life Quotes

http://prezi.com/brhnzd6yu7ls/life/

Everybody's Free To Wear Sunscreen

Baz Luhrmann's song "Everybody's Free To Wear Sunscreen" has given very true advice that will certainly help many. He has directed his song towards young people who are about to sail on the big ship of life. One of my favorite lines in his song was when he said, "Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements." You shouldn't dwell on the depressing things in life. Instead, you should always look at the things that make life happier. I will certainly follow the song's advice when it said, "Don't mess too much with your hair." So do not dye your hair a zillion different colors because you are harming yourself. Take care of your hair, love it, and be gentle with it. "Or by the time you're 40 it will look 85." Life moves fast, but that doesn't mean you have to be reckless. Advice I would give many would be to take life as it is given. Everything that happens is for a reason. There is no need to get hung up on anything. Just figure out what your net move is going to be and proceed.
Don't forget to wear sunscreen!

What Is Worth Knowing?

What Is Worth Knowing? I asked myself this question a countless number of times until I came to the realization that you must know your yourself before anything. Nobody can teach you how to look in your inner self and see your limitations, desires, and everything that makes you, you. Knowing your mental,emotional, and physical limitations can save you a lot of pain and misery. Lets say you run track, its important to know when you have to slow down so you don't injure yourself. It's good to know how long you can study without you hurting yourself. Knowing how much bad or good news you can take in can save you a lot of metal agony. So, before you try learning about the vast, complicated world, try knowing yourself because its more complex then you have ever reilized and thats the most valable thing.

What the World Eats

(This is for class)

1. Germany ($500) and Luxembourg ($465) spend the most on food every week.
2. The United States, Germany, and Mexico consume the most food per week.
3. The Revis family from North Carolina had the most packaging.
4. The Mendozas family of Guatemala has the healthiest diet. Their diet included of a lot of vegetables, especially green ones. It looked like the vegetables were freshly picked and that means no excess chemical preservatives.
5. The Aboubakar family from Chad has the least healthy diet. There isn't enough nutrition to satisfy the needs of all six people in the family. All the Aboubakar family is basically eating are grains and water. 
6. As relating to the answer in question 3, The Revis family from North Carolina may be the most wasteful because of all of the packaging on their foods. The soft drinks, chips, vegetables, and more all have packaging that can't be recycled, but sent to a landfill and will take a very long time to decompose. The actual food may not be what's wasteful, but what it comes in is.
7. I was surprised when I saw that the Casales family that has five people, in Mexico needed twelve bottles of soda for one week. All that soda defeats the purpose of all of those vegetables.
8. The photo where the customers were picking out their food with chopsticks from the street vendors really interested me since in America we use a very different approach.
9. My families' diet shares some similarities as well as some differences with the diets depicted in the pictures. I don't receive my food the same way as some people do, and that includes not catching seals. I saw some people in Chad face not having enough food, and I'm blessed to have not been in that situation. But, like some people in Bosnia and elsewhere, I get my food from a supermarket. I eat many of the same foods as some people do all over the world.

Waste Land

Recently, in class we watched a documentary on the world's largest landfill, located in Rio, Brazil. The most memorable part of the film was when the workers at Jardim Gramacho helped blowup the photos he took. It shows how other people’s trash can be someone else’s treasure. I learned that you should find as much value as you can with the things you have because if you don't it will be left in a waste land never to be seen or used again. Let's say you go grocery shopping and you have your food items bagged in plastic bags. Once home you unload the food from the plastic bags and throw them away. Those bags could have been used as a trash bag or to carry books, but it wasn't. Instead it was thrown away and will end up in a landfill. Plastic bags take 500 years to decompose. Now image all 8 billion people on Earth throw away 1 plastic bag every day. There wouldn't be enough room to fit all of them. You should find as much value with the items you got before you throw it away. The way I think the people in the picture felt about the photo is proud. Not many people know that there are garbage pickers. The art bring awareness to them and appreciation to what the pickers do. They want to be seen and I believe that the subjects were very happy to finally be looked at. If Vik Muniz had made me the subject of his art, I would feel embarrassed but excited. I would be worried that the photo wouldn't give a true representation of me; however, I think it would be cool to see a photo of me be fun sized. There aren't many aspects of my life that would lead to the same type of art Vik Muniz created, but there are times. The times in my life when I feel accomplished, determined, lonely, etc. are the times when similar art can be created. These emotions go deep down to a place that is very delicate and so, when photographed, it reaches out to people.