Draft of Iconic Art

The next draft has gone very far.  I have some new concepts that I would like to discuss in the statement other than some of the ones stated previously, and I also have a newly revised picture.  Although I cannot post the picture because of reasons too complex to go into at the moment.

 The new things that I am going to add in would be information on why the terrorists "chose" that path, bestowed upon me by this little article here, and more information on a successful choice to save the capitol on the well known flight of "Let's Roll".  This information will probably replace whatever I was going to talk about with the people in the recovery effort, because what I was talking about in the last post really struck me as a very ignorant post, and I do not want to be the one suffering ignorance.

 My thesis statement is also now revised to "The incident involving 9-11 is connected to the quote by the choices made in multiple situations by various people around the world, including the middle east and the ruling religious and political leaders governing the would be terrorists, the heroic passengers of flight 93, and the terrorists themselves on the two planes that hit the Twin Towers."

 This revision of everything occurred because, first of all, its was only a rough outline, and second of all, I want to have this art piece be more positive and pro-America, and not to make it seem like I am anti-America in any way.  It was also changed because I have only recently come across some new thoughts such as the article about why people become terrorists, and the leaders who manipulate the correct messages of various significant texts to bend people to their will.

 That was a quick overview of the changes made in my artists statement.  Have a good day.

Artist Statement Outline

In class, we are creating art pieces combining a creative arts person from United States history, and a historical situation or person from the more non-creative nonfiction side of the United States history, and creating both an art piece, and an artists statement on the art piece. I chose to use a quote from Dr. Seuss' book Oh, The Places You'll Go!, and the 9-11 situation from 2001. Here is the rough draft of the art piece that I have going.
The thesis statement that I have so far for my artists statement is, "The correlation between this quote from Theodore Geisel's Oh, The Places You'll Go! and the 9-11 incident can be interpreted many different ways, including a literal, and figurative sense, and each of these can also be applied to three groups of people in the pictures situation, the terrorists, the people on the planes, and the people in the rescue at after the incident occurs."

The first paragraph will start with a question, asking the reader what they think about destiny or fate.  Then it will go on and bring up the picture and the quote and how they fit together.

From this, the first two paragraphs would go over the literal and figurative meanings of the terrorists situation, talking about how they could have chosen to do this and volunteered or they might have been forced to this by a higher power.  The next paragraph would go over the people on the planes, who either chose to try and live by fighting back, or accepted their fate by sitting off to the side.  Then the last paragraph or two would go over the people who were volunteers, the people who volunteered not to help, and the ones made to help whether they liked it or not.

Throughout the body paragraphs, I am going to use other quotes from the same book that apply, because after looking up where the original quote came from and its context, it can really work in the situation.  I am also going to state Dr. Seuss' relationship to war, and how he used to be a political cartoonist specializing in world war two comedy.

The conclusion will be made up of the restatement of the thesis, coming out to be something similar to "9-11 and this quote remain relevant to each other through a strong literal meaning, and a hinted figurative meaning, which can be applied to everyone in the vicinity of the crash.  It will also mention the concept of destiny and the concept of moulding your own destiny, where I will probably end it asking what the reader thinks of fate after reading the artists statement.

George Bush, Environmentalist?

          There are two things to go over in this blog, one is a news story from Washington Post about how George Bush, in his final days of presidency, setting up a natural preserve out in three areas of the Pacific ocean, and the other is an article from Salon.com on all of Bush's environmental sins.

          The first article I am going to explain is the one from the Washington Post.  This first one goes over, as stated earlier, how he is declaring 3 areas out in the Pacific a marine national monument.  Now this is great and all, but what information you have so far doesn't explain the whole story.  George Bush is now doing what no person has ever done before, believe it or not.  The article from the Washington Post says "Bush's decision to safeguard far-flung areas totaling 195,280 square miles ... by the end of his term he will have protected more ocean than any person in history."  This is great.  These "monuments" he just set up will protect from fishing, oil rigs, and any other sort of damage you could imagine.

           The second article on the other hand, shows all of George's other environmental flaws while in office.  The "Seven Sins" listed are...

1. "Bush Sin 1: Blew hot air on global warming"

                   This means that Bush ignored the mandatory greenhouse gas emission reduction, prompting other countries to do this as well.

2. "Bush Sin 2: Failed to regulate greenhouse gases at home"

                   Meaning he vetoed any law that congress tried to put in place to regulate emissions.

3. "Bush Sin 3: Failed to develop clean energy sources"

                   According to the article Bush promoted the idea that we will all be driving eco-friendly cars by 2020, then goes on to say that he hasn't promoted the individual eco-friendly powering systems enough, while promoting coal and oil.

4. "Bush Sin 4: Abandoned endangered species"

                   George Bush has apparently never declared a species of animal endangered.

5. "Bush Sin 5: Carved up the American West for oil and gas excavation"

                   According to the article, "Since Bush took office, an area slightly larger than the state of Kentucky has been leased for oil and gas drilling on public lands in the United States; almost 27 million acres have been designated to be plundered for their hydrocarbons."  Make what you will of it.

6. "Bush Sin 6: Not seeing the forest or the trees"

                  Bush has created a policy that has enabled forest "thinning" in order to help prevent wildfires, but ends up being a deforestation process.

7. "Bush Sin 7: Choked our clean air standards"

                  This part of the article claims that Bush has been trying to back up any regulation on clean air, creating more and more emissions.

          Both of these stories have legitimacy to them, so the big question is what choice makes the biggest impact?  All of these choices that he made impact the world, and influences their choices as well.  Because of our leniency on gas regulations, other countries have become lenient as well, but the national monument system can possibly encourage other countries to do the same and save one of the only environments left barely touched by humans.

          So, is George Bush environmental enough for us?

Internshipping

          This semester, I am required to take an internship, and I will write down a few things that are in the works for them in this blog.

          1. During this internship, I plan on immersing myself in all that is the adult world.  What I mean by this is, I plan to (almost) cut all ties from school while embarking on my internship, and act as if I was an actual employee at whatever place I get placed in.  I plan on thinking as realistically as possible, so I do not get thrown in situations that are over my head.  I do not know exactly how I will experience all that I can of the "adult" world, but once I learn how, I will participate is it and experience it to the fullest.

          2. I plan to progress as a person with this internship.  I think that, given the correct environment, I can change into a person who is a lot more organized and focused.  I plan on learning who I need to end up being in order to be able to function in the work environment later on in my life, and I also plan on learning how to achieve this transformation.  If I can succeed, it could quite possibly change my entire life and how I go about my day.

          3. The only goals that I have for this internship would be to pace myself, and find my limits.  If I can keep up those goals, I will be able to accomplish almost anything.  These are probably the most important things that I need to find about myself at the moment, so they are what I am striving for.

End of the Year Reflection

          Al-righty then.

          This is the second to last blog post until school starts back up in January, and I am going to write about the best pieces of work I have done so far this semester that I am very proud of.

          First was the video project that I did on the state of our ocean waters and how our

 littering effects it.  As of the moment the video is not hosted anywhere, but I am working on getting it hosted to youtube (it's currently uploading).  I feel like I really connected to this project because I am a person that cares about the oceans, and the amount of untapped power and unseen beauty that lies within it, and I am definitely not one to stop and let the people that say they are the same as me ruin it.  I put a lot of work into it, and as there are some timing issues that I would love to fix, it is too late now.  I am also proud of how some of my shots were taken.  This shot here I feel is a great artistic shot because of the wide angle and how much it covers and shows.  It shows a cigarette butt sitting in a gutter in the bottom right corner, yet a great blue cloudy sky in the top left.  I feel like it really shows how one little thing can ruin a

 great big thing, just by being in the wrong place, which was really the whole point of the project that I was working on and I feel that this specific shot shows that.

          I got to this point through tons of hard work and time.  I think I stayed in at least days from 7:30 till at least 7:30.  I also worked hard outside of the classroom, in order to get interviews outside of the school, or footage outside of school.  I feel like good projects really require more than a slight motivation and some internet research.  It requires a huge drive and a lot of research, not only through the internet, but through people, places, and things.  For instance for this project I went to a beach cleanup hosted by Surfrider SD and Coastkeeper, and I found some interesting information, such as the amount of trash picked up there, and also the types of trash that was found there.

Neptune's Navy!

          An interesting vigilante environmentalist group known as the Sea Shepherds has recently become very publicized in the United States, thanks to support from Animal Planet, and I am going to post a blog on my personal opinions about what they do.

          The Captain and Owner of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is named Paul Watson.  He looks like a stereotypical lumber jack, only a foot shorter and with white hair.  Ever since he was a child he was completely against any sort of cruel behavior towards any animal.  He even claims that, when he was 9 years old, he shot a kid with a B.B. gun for harassing birds, and destroyed animal traps after his "pet beaver" got stuck in one.  Now as I am unsure about the truth to these stories, this man has dedicated himself to the preservation of marine wildlife around the world.

          Now, the people that he is trying to expose to the world are the japanese.  The japanese are currently the biggest threat to whales in the wild, killing more than a thousand in december of 2005.  The japanese excuse for this currently illegal activity is that it is for research, commonly showing signs in english stating "Collecting tissue samples" and painting the word Research on the side of every whaling vessel they have in their fleet.  The problem here is, the company that they are doing research for, the Institute for Cetacean Research, has never published a thing, which most people think is due to the fact that their whales get cut up and shipped to restaurants before any research can be done to them.

          Companies such as Greenpeace, which Paul Watson helped give an influential start to, are not in support of the techniques used, and claimed to have been used, by the Sea Shepherds, commonly denying any relation to the eco-vigilante group.  The techniques used by the Sea Shepherds include ramming, smoke bombs, boarding vessels or various reasons, and media attention.  One of their most commonly used tools is the media, and they know how to use it.  They are a big story in australian now, because of the fact that the japanese are whaling in an australian protected habitat.  Where the methods of the Sea Shepherds may be wrong, violent, and sometimes a risk to whalers lives, there are still a lot of supporters in their campaign against whaling, such as Pierce Brosnan, Orlando Bloom and Mic Jagger.

          Personally, I feel as if the Sea Shepherds are correct, because I like the idea of protecting endangered animals such as the fin whales, a prominent capture of the japanese, whether the whalers get hurt or not.  I believe this because they need to be taught a lesson, and if extremes are necessary, it will show the japanese governments just how much people care, and they might stop, or even slow down their whaling expeditions. 

Racial Identity Theft On The Rise!

          Ok, so it isn't really theft, but it is a problem that has been going on unnoticed for a long time.   The issue here is racial assumption, the act of thinking someone is from a certain ethnic group just by their look. An example of this is when people look at Oprah, they think that she is black. It may seem that way, but really, she is a mix of African, Native American, and East Asian. This whole assumption thing poses a big problem in my mind, and it is triggered by a few various things.
          The first thing that I would like to bring up would be the large yet somewhat realistic stereotype of the so called "Black" people and their crime rates. According to the official government Bureau of Justice website on the statistics of homicide trends by race, between the year 1976 and 2005, 52% of all homicides in the United States were committed by one who was recognized as an African American.  But, if you go to the site, there is no listings for hispanics, and the only other statistic is listed "other", and the rates for other are extremely low compared to White and Black, never exceeding 5%.  First off, this does not give a good name to the word "Black" at all, almost giving an excuse for racial stereotypes.  Second,  it is almost shameful for the great American government themselves to give out statistics such as this because of the fact that they do not include any sort of information regarding mixed race people, and, the statistics seem a little off because they do not include hispanics.  The fact that it does not include hispanics, and if hispanics were included in the group labeled "other", then they would have committed less than 5% of every homicide in America since 1976.  Does that make much sense to you?

          The next point I would like to make is what we have done with the professional people that have made it far in America.  Obama, the next president, is, believe it or not, is not "Black".  Obama is not the first black president, but he is the first multiracial president.  The news has given off a nice sort of story that is almost convincing everyone in america that we have the first black president, and the black people have come such a long ways in America.  Do you really think so?  Obama's mother was white.

          The big question now is, does putting the name "Black", with all of its negative connotations, on to some one of the multiracial status of Tiger Woods, or Barack Obama, bring the negative connotation of the term further toward the positive side? Or does it make the person the connotation is being applied to look worse?  The big picture here is, we really have not put much thought into how we as a people refer to others, and that in turn has led to a lot of assumptions, some of which can possibly be very dangerous.