Cryonics....

     Today, in my speech class we watched a video that contained many students from a few select universities giving speeches. After the fourth or fifth speech a girl began speaking on cryonics. Keeping in mind that this video was made in the late 90's and I am sure they have made some type of improvements in cryonics since this video and her speech I still do not quite understand. For those that do not know what cryonics is it is the process of being frozen shortly after death in the hopes that many decades later when disease no longer exists and science has improved to the point where the frozen will be thawed able to be brought back to life. For me, this causes so much confusion, misunderstanding and even a small amount of anger. As she was speaking she proceeded to say, "Although science is advanced enough to freeze and preserve you, science has not yet found a way to successfully thaw you and revive your major organs."  ...........Yeah, just take a moment and let that sink in. You can be frozen but there is no guarantee that you can be successfully thawed and brought back to life. With that being said, even if they found a way to thaw a frozen individual and bring them back to life what guarantees that that person will not have the characteristics of a zombie in the thought that they will be characterless and just roaming around the earth with no agenda or purpose? Lastly, why would you want to be brought back to life if most of the human race has died off? I don't know about you but I think I can speak for millions on this subject when I say this does not sound intriguing. But, with that being said I would say that maybe freezing and reviving organs alone would be more of a success and beneficial to the human race assuming they can find a way to successfully thaw the organ with the ability to make it function once again.

Pow-Wow

This past Sunday I decided to attend the Chickahominy's 62nd annual American Indian Pow-Wow. This was not my first time attending a pow-wow but each time I go I become so intrigued and excited I feel like it is completely new to me. When I first arrived, the amount of vehicles I rolled up to was immense! I parked my car and as I turned the engine off I could feel the vibrations of the drums being played for the tribal dancers. As I began opening my door to get out of my vehicle and as I began walking up to the plantation, the closer I got the louder the drums became. I began to hear the chanting of the tribal songs and the sound of the tribal dancers outfits jingling. The smell of sage fills the air and the excitement within me can hardly be contained. Now, I do have Indian blood in me. It is a part of my heritage but I do not look it. My skin is pale, my hair is dark and curly, my eyes are the color of blue. By looking at me you would conclude the fact that I am just an average, typical white twenty-year-old. But as I look into the tribal circle, I saw these women and a few men whom of which lacked the dark skin color, just as I. They were dressed just like the others from head to toe making their way around the circle and dancing in sinc the others. I'm not going to lie, their skin color did make them stick out quite a bit amongst the crowd of dancers but they didn't seem to mind and neither did anyone else. A break for the dancers came and the host of the event came to the microphone. He began to introduce Miss Chickahominy 2013-2014 and as he did so he explained the qualities that are most important and sought out by the tribal counsel when deciding who to crown. He explained that the outer appearance is not of the utmost importance but instead the inside beauty. The knowledge one had of her culture and heritage, how she portrayed it and lived out the legacy of her family members in her every day life and how she chose to share that knowledge and love with others. That, is what they care about. He announced her name and as she walked to the microphone all eyes and attention fell to her. She was medium height, with long black hair that was neatly braded and fell over her shoulder. She, also, was dressed head to toe in a beautiful traditional dancers outfit. She took the microphone to welcome us. She spoke with such clarity and excitement. She was beautiful. Afterwards we all gathered to join the circle to shake her hand and congratulate her and followed her around the circle to show her our support. Shortly, following the dancers re-entered the circle and began their rituals all over. I walked around to get a better look at the singers. At the time there were about five or six singers surrounding one single drum each holding a drum stick. There was always one singer that led each song but the rest would follow behind him. The songs are not of words but instead of different sounds and alliterations. Some sounds are faster some are slower. Some are louder and some are lower. The amazing thing is each singers sounds and beats matched the others. Keep in mind each song was different. Somehow they all had learned each sound by heart and knew the different sounds and drum beats and when to make them! This is truly an amazing culture and I could write about it for hours and although I do not carry the physical attributes I am proud to know this is what helps make up my heritage. If someday the courage within me builds you'll find me in the circle dancing too but until then I encourage everyone to find their heritage and embrace it. Black , white, purple, green, pink I don't care, There is more to each one of us than what meets the eye.

The Prisoners!!!!!!!!

Soooooo, Saturday September, 21st my fiancé and I decided to take some much needed alone time and go see a movie together. We pulled up Fandango on our phones and searched through the movie options and both decided we would like to see the movie, The Prisoners. It's safe to say that I had seen the preview for the movie multiple times and found myself intrigued but I did not realize how intense of a movie it would actually be. This movie was not necessarily scary but much more realistic and that I think is what got to me the most.

This movie was based around two young girls that were abducted from their neighborhood one evening and their parents pursuit to find them and get them home safely with or without the help of the law. They had a pretty good idea of who they thought took their children or who at least knew due to the fact that they had been caught climbing on a strange RV outside their homes by their older siblings. The law tracked down the RV and found that a young man in his younger 20's most likely used it for fun on the summer nights. They took him in for further questioning only to learn that his IQ was one of a 10 year old. Well, this information was not exactly good enough for one of the girls' fathers. After the young man was released, the particular young girls' father went to the young man's house and abducted him for his own personal questioning and torture. To make a long story short, the young girls were found. They were abducted by the young man's "Aunt" who actually turned out to be his own abductor.

Now, keeping in mind that the young girls were indeed the prisoners in this movie and some may even argue that the particular detective assigned to the case was the prisoner but I personally would argue that the real prisoner in this movie would be the young man with the IQ of a 10 year old. This young man was taken himself when he was not much older than the girls by his "Aunt". She kept him and "raised" him to believe that he was indeed hers and that he needed her. He was brain washed and he was neglected to the point where he never grew intellectually. He was set up by this woman that he so called his "Aunt" to where he drove the RV, in this case the get-away vehicle and she was never to be seen inside leaving him to be the one that is seen as the kidnapper. This, in my opinion, led to the young girls father abducting him from outside of his home and taking him to a secluded, condemned, old apartment complex to torture him until he gave up the known whereabouts of the young girls. Needless to say, he never spoke a word about their whereabouts and he was tortured to death.

While everyone in the movie theater including my fiancé anticipated the rescue of the young girls, I anticipated the mercy and rescue of the young man only to be disappointed. I know what you're thinking, "How could you even care about a soul-less individual such as he! Wouldn't you do the same to if they were your little girls!?!" Now let's take a moment to reflect. This young man had a KNOWN and ACKNOWLEDGED IQ of a 10 year old by law enforcements. He himself was abducted by his "Aunt". Whether or not he knows the whereabouts of the two little girls, which in the case he did, he is not the one that should've been pursued as he was. I'm sure he himself had been threatened and he was terrified not only of his "Aunt" but of the parents of the young girls and the law that honestly believed that he was responsible. He was truly stuck between a rock and a hard place. Next, we should know that yelling and scaring a sensitive individual will not force him or her to give over any answers that he or she may know. By torturing him, that only made the fathers situation worse. You cannot scream at an individual, especially and child or in this case a young man with the IQ of one, and expect him to trust you enough to relay the information. Torturing him did not bring those little girls home. Patience and professionalism did. Those little girls got to return home safely to their warm beds and loving families and he was left to die. Hearing his screams for help during this movie wrenched my heart. If my children were taken I would be lost, devastated, anxious, bitter etc. but I would also know that torturing a clearly innocent, mentally disabled person would not bring my children home and at the end of the day, I could not sleep knowing what I had done. It is not my choice to decide who lives and who dies. Believe me when I say I would protect myself and my family in emergency situations and if harming someone in the process was what I needed to do then I would, but let me also say that I would have to KNOW for a fact who committed such things against my family or have caught him or her in the act and I still most likely would have a hard time sleeping at night knowing that I had to make the decision on someone's life.

                                (the young man being pinned down by the young girl's father)

Rising and Converging

     This story, in my opinion, was very understandable but at the same time it seemed to baffle me in many ways. It wasn't so much the mother character in the story but the son. The story was an easy read compared to some of the previous stories we have read and seemed to keep my attention pretty well.
     The mother character in the story seemed to feel a very high sense of personal worth. So much that she believed that 95% of the people she encountered were inferior to her. She was caretaker of her son whom of which she struggled to raise and put through college. To most, struggling does not sound pleasant but she clamed to have enjoyed struggling. The neighborhood they lived in at one point had been a nice and respectable place to call home but over the years it had seemed to have taken it's toll and no longer was the respectable place she still saw it as. Integration had taken place but it something she had refused to acknowledge. For the life of her she just could not understand why anybody would believe that dark-skinned people would be beneficial to the world in any other way but slavery. Her son, on the other hand, almost seemed as if though he wanted to disown her. If he could find a way to be rid of his mother or to replace her, I'm sure he would've. He was very ashamed and embarrassed by his mothers actions. He was very angry with her for being so polarized with her thoughts. It's almost as if even though the whole world had to change and accept new things she was the one exception to that rule. He felt as if though it were his responsibility to teach her a lesson. To show her that her ancient and close minded ways of thinking needed to go and that meant doing everything in his power that he thought would accomplish just that. He spent his days trying to clean up the mess his mother made in the lives if others. Specifically, African Americans.                
     Although, all of this is not hard to understand, the part that I cannot seem to wrap my mind around is why was he such a sour person? I understand that his mother was a arrogant, condescending, patronizing, snooty and etc. but why did he feel as if he needed to take on her wrong doings? Why did he allow that to get him down so much that he would take himself to an imaginary world just to get away from her? He was not his mother but for some reason it's almost as if he acted like he was her and he realized how wrong his actions were and he was trying to spend the rest of his life making up for them. I understand that any normal person who had a mother that behaved like his would be very off-put and upset but to understand that it's not your problem, it's the other persons and move on or get as far away from it as you can and realize that there's nothing you can do to change them and they have to change on their own, now that, that is what he should've done.

The Lone Ranger

     Since beginning this semester, as well as Sweeney's Lit Reader, we have read a handful of short stories. With each short story being unique in it's own way I found a way to read between the lines and relate to each story someway or another. Although I found it easy to relate somehow to each one I found that one in particular seemed to catch my interest quite a bit more than the rest.

     The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. This story, to me, had many many hidden feelings and emotions that which were only briefly surpassed by the writer leaving it up to the reader to pick up on each comment and take them into consideration to better put together this story. When I personally began to think of the meanings behind the feelings I realized how relatable his feelings are to many others, including myself. I feel as if though he just felt stuck. As if life was just predestined in every way. The character was a Native American, clearly a minority, doing his best to exceed and surpass his native ways by attending high school with another race as well as dating a woman of another race and attending college with another race. He tried hard to succeed in ways that differed from what he would have following his native roots and in a way I guess it could be argued that he did indeed do just that, by going above and beyond the typical Native American ways, but inside he was still just trying to find where he fit. Although he was Native American, he acted as though he was Caucasian by attending Caucasian schools and dating a Caucasian woman but never forgetting his roots.

     I know that that was a very fast and brief explanation of the story but being as this is a blog entry and not a novel explaining the story it will have to do but there's just one major point I would like to make. Aren't we all a minority, individually? There is only one us and each one of us never really "fit" into everything we desire to do or become throughout our life. We have all at one point or another experienced loneliness and the feeling as if we are a minority in a certain environment but choosing to be brave and continue on with our lives just as The Lone Ranger chose to do and accepting our failures and getting back up to follow through with our desires no matter how daunting or how many people you may have pulling against us we'll find that we will eventually some way or another make it in the end. I do not know how this story ended but if I had to guess I would say he eventually found himself by accepting his individual differences and by accepting them did he learn that he truly fit anywhere he wanted to be because no one is indeed the same.