Hi, all.
Watch The Dream is Now. It's a documentary. It's on Netflix. It's only thirty minutes long. It's very important.
It's also very frustrating.
The Dream is Now follows a group of youthful immigrants as they try and fail to achieve citizenship and their respective dreams. And after watching it, I have a request - a completely genuine request, believe me. Could someone please explain to me why we don't want to grant people citizenship? I ask this question constantly, but no one's ever been able to give me a straight answer. If these people were citizens, they would pay taxes. They would go to college. They would become successful, would be doctors and lawyers and psychologists and teachers and social workers and politicians and they'd join the armed forces and they'd do important, valuable things. Yes, they'd take up jobs, but they'd do amazing things with those jobs, just as well as - and sometimes even better than - a natural-born citizen ever could, because these people have the drive to achieve their dreams.
And don't tell me our population would rise, because it's already risen. They're already here. I just want to know why the kids who know perfect English and take all the hard classes and graduate high school on high honor roll and want to be damn rocket scientists can't just go ahead and do that because no one would give the a social security number.
I hadn't realized it was this bad.
This really bothers me, if you couldn't already tell. In The Distance Between Us, Reyna doesn't have this problem because she gets a Green Card. But these people can't; they're as good a proof as any that we need a better system.
Anyway, that's my fifth and final artifact reflection. I hope you enjoyed it. Grumble grumble grumble....
-Allie H-S
P.S: School starts tomorrow and the nerves are breaking me apart. I have never been this anxious before, but apparently all my friends are feeling it, too. I don't even have a specific thing I'm stressing over. It's not because I'm going to a new school, like everyone suggests; I've moved up in schools twice before, and I was totally fine. I think it's just because the last two years of school sucked, honestly. Treasure Mountain causes lots of social issues - the administration seems to think this is because of bullying, but I've never directly encountered that. I've only encountered angst and depression and exhaustion. I mostly blame the building.
August 20, 2014
Artifact Reflection 4
Hi, all.
My fourth artifact is a small LEGO helicopter. It's orange with black propellers, maybe six inches long. It has lights to shine down (with your imagination, that is) and a grappling hook that can come down from one side. I chose this as my fourth artifact because I wanted to talk about the scene in The Distance Between Us where Reyna and her family are attempting to cross the border for the third time, their last chance. Their first two attempts failed because of Reyna, and if they don't make it this time, she and her siblings will be sent back to their paternal grandmother's house in Iguala, a home where they will never find the love Reyna's been looking for so desperately throughout the story.
This scene was important not only for the purposes of plot, but for those of understanding. Before reading this book, I'd never realized how drastically divided - and ultimately, broken - families can become in the process of immigration. I'd never really thought about the possibility of them not being able to take their entire family across the border. In America, there are so many horrible jokes about how many illegals can fit into a car, so I'd always just assumed that they all came over at once. In fact, when Reyna's mother left in the beginning of the story, I was a bit confused; why didn't her father just send for all of them? Were it not for the border crossing scene, I still wouldn't fully understand.
Illegally migrating is damn hard.
Like I said, this is their third try. The first time, Reyna got a tooth ache and couldn't walk on her own, so her father had to carry her. They couldn't move quickly enough that way, and border control caught them. The second time, they stopped to rest and Reyna wandered off, stumbling on the body of a man lying in the bushes. She screamed loudly, and again, border patrol found them quickly.
The third time, they traveled across the border by night. About halfway through their trip, a helicopter flew low overhead, searching. They ran for shelter. Reyna's brother, Carlos, tripped and they nearly left him behind. When the searchlight came down, it caught Reyna's shoe, and she yanked it under the brush. It was a miracle that they hadn't been seen.
So in short, the reason Reyna's father hadn't sent for all of them the first time was because three children, ages four to eight, couldn't have made it. I think this is also applicable to our current migratory situations (as mentioned in the last three posts and the next one, too) because it sucks that, while people try so desperately hard to get into the United States, and have close to nothing to go back to, when we find them, we just deport them anyway.
We need to fix this somehow.
-Allie H-S
 |
| It's missing a couple parts. I apologize. |
This scene was important not only for the purposes of plot, but for those of understanding. Before reading this book, I'd never realized how drastically divided - and ultimately, broken - families can become in the process of immigration. I'd never really thought about the possibility of them not being able to take their entire family across the border. In America, there are so many horrible jokes about how many illegals can fit into a car, so I'd always just assumed that they all came over at once. In fact, when Reyna's mother left in the beginning of the story, I was a bit confused; why didn't her father just send for all of them? Were it not for the border crossing scene, I still wouldn't fully understand.
Illegally migrating is damn hard.
Like I said, this is their third try. The first time, Reyna got a tooth ache and couldn't walk on her own, so her father had to carry her. They couldn't move quickly enough that way, and border control caught them. The second time, they stopped to rest and Reyna wandered off, stumbling on the body of a man lying in the bushes. She screamed loudly, and again, border patrol found them quickly.
The third time, they traveled across the border by night. About halfway through their trip, a helicopter flew low overhead, searching. They ran for shelter. Reyna's brother, Carlos, tripped and they nearly left him behind. When the searchlight came down, it caught Reyna's shoe, and she yanked it under the brush. It was a miracle that they hadn't been seen.
So in short, the reason Reyna's father hadn't sent for all of them the first time was because three children, ages four to eight, couldn't have made it. I think this is also applicable to our current migratory situations (as mentioned in the last three posts and the next one, too) because it sucks that, while people try so desperately hard to get into the United States, and have close to nothing to go back to, when we find them, we just deport them anyway.
We need to fix this somehow.
-Allie H-S
August 19, 2014
Artifact Reflection 3
Hi, all.
Thank you for reading my slightly preachy artifacts even though you totally don't have to. (Unless you're my new English teacher, in which case you absolutely have to because you assigned it. This is your doing.) My third artifact is another article (to be found here).
This is an article posted by USA Today about how deporting everybody won't stop people from coming over. No matter how many children they catch mid-trip and send back to their country, it won't stop those children from trying again and again and again, because no matter how much money they have to pay cartels to help them across, it will never be worse than going back to their home in Central America, where they can't go to school for fear of being recruited by gangs and they can't eat dinner because there is never food on the table. The last line of the article is a quote from a fourteen-year-old boy from Hoduras named Brian. "'We've suffered a lot to try to make our lives better,' he says. 'If they knew what we've been through, they'd let us in.'"
I've never been particularly well-versed in political intricacies, even and especially those relating to border patrol, but I've always sort of viewed the deportation of illegal immigrants as treating the symptom. Maybe this is because I live in Park City, Utah and have never experienced the full and direct flow of these immigrant children I keep hearing about, but I struggle to believe that deportation can fix all of our problems for us. I figure, if you truly want to stop this unending flow of people from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, maybe you should make some sort of plan to help Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. I know that won't be easy - there is no magic button - but there are also many, many people who, given the means, would love to help. I also know it'll take a while - most important things take a while - but in the end, it'll be well worth it.
At the very least, I think they should work to move all these kids out of California and Texas. Just, you know, diffuse them into the midwest, where we can better handle them.
Maybe I'm just some stupid rich white girl, but...it makes sense to me.
-Allie H-S
P.S: I just realized, this is my fiftieth post! Yaaaaaay milestone! Woooooo!
Thank you for reading my slightly preachy artifacts even though you totally don't have to. (Unless you're my new English teacher, in which case you absolutely have to because you assigned it. This is your doing.) My third artifact is another article (to be found here).
This is an article posted by USA Today about how deporting everybody won't stop people from coming over. No matter how many children they catch mid-trip and send back to their country, it won't stop those children from trying again and again and again, because no matter how much money they have to pay cartels to help them across, it will never be worse than going back to their home in Central America, where they can't go to school for fear of being recruited by gangs and they can't eat dinner because there is never food on the table. The last line of the article is a quote from a fourteen-year-old boy from Hoduras named Brian. "'We've suffered a lot to try to make our lives better,' he says. 'If they knew what we've been through, they'd let us in.'"
I've never been particularly well-versed in political intricacies, even and especially those relating to border patrol, but I've always sort of viewed the deportation of illegal immigrants as treating the symptom. Maybe this is because I live in Park City, Utah and have never experienced the full and direct flow of these immigrant children I keep hearing about, but I struggle to believe that deportation can fix all of our problems for us. I figure, if you truly want to stop this unending flow of people from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, maybe you should make some sort of plan to help Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. I know that won't be easy - there is no magic button - but there are also many, many people who, given the means, would love to help. I also know it'll take a while - most important things take a while - but in the end, it'll be well worth it.
At the very least, I think they should work to move all these kids out of California and Texas. Just, you know, diffuse them into the midwest, where we can better handle them.
Maybe I'm just some stupid rich white girl, but...it makes sense to me.
-Allie H-S
P.S: I just realized, this is my fiftieth post! Yaaaaaay milestone! Woooooo!
Artifact Reflection 2
Hi, all.
I'm running a bit low on time, so let's cut to the chase for these next few posts. This post says I have my second artifact.
This artifact is a pair of beat up kid's sneakers. I actually bought these sneakers at a thrift store in Salt Lake about a year ago just 'cause I thought they were cute and I wanted to draw them. They're a pair of child's size-seven Converse knock-offs (a brand called "Eastside"). The fabric that was once bright red is faded and dirtied. The laces have no aglets and are loopy and frayed, at parts only hanging by threads through the nicked silver eyelets. The soles have been worn thin, and the once-white toecaps are the color of long-neglected paperbacks due to an uncertain combination of dirt and age. Though they're obviously too small for me to wear, I wanted them from the moment I saw them because they look loved; they look well-worn; they look like the epitome of an American eight-year-old's childhood well-spent.
They're my second artifact because while they could have been a part of my lovely American childhood, they never could have entered that of a young Mexican Reyna's. Throughout the first part of the book, and even into the beginning of the second, Reyna points out constantly how she and her siblings and every other child in Iguala are almost always barefoot, except for on rare occasions like her cousin Elida's quinceanera and one time when their parents in the United States send her shoes that don't even fit.
I realize this is a very small and simple thing, but it really didn't occur to me that they wouldn't have shoes. I mean, I've paid enough attention to know that not everybody has shoes - Africa doesn't have shoes. I doubt China has shoes. God knows if North Korea has shoes. But Mexico borders us; they probably make half of our shoes. I know things suck in Mexico, but the fact that it's such a popular tourist destination always helps to mask the fact that things suck that much.
I should retake AP World Geography at some point. That was quite a valuable class.
Anyways, I guess this artifact is really "children's shoes or lack thereof." It makes me wonder why we focus all our charity efforts on Africa and the United States, when really, people also need help in nearly every country on nearly every continent. I mean, it's true that nowhere is perfect and nowhere can be (there are no utopias), but we still have to try to make the world as good as we can possibly make it, and we still need to help everyone we can help.
Let's help people.
That's all for now.
-Allie H-S
I'm running a bit low on time, so let's cut to the chase for these next few posts. This post says I have my second artifact.
 |
| Behold, a sneaker in all of its glory. |
They're my second artifact because while they could have been a part of my lovely American childhood, they never could have entered that of a young Mexican Reyna's. Throughout the first part of the book, and even into the beginning of the second, Reyna points out constantly how she and her siblings and every other child in Iguala are almost always barefoot, except for on rare occasions like her cousin Elida's quinceanera and one time when their parents in the United States send her shoes that don't even fit.
I realize this is a very small and simple thing, but it really didn't occur to me that they wouldn't have shoes. I mean, I've paid enough attention to know that not everybody has shoes - Africa doesn't have shoes. I doubt China has shoes. God knows if North Korea has shoes. But Mexico borders us; they probably make half of our shoes. I know things suck in Mexico, but the fact that it's such a popular tourist destination always helps to mask the fact that things suck that much.
I should retake AP World Geography at some point. That was quite a valuable class.
Anyways, I guess this artifact is really "children's shoes or lack thereof." It makes me wonder why we focus all our charity efforts on Africa and the United States, when really, people also need help in nearly every country on nearly every continent. I mean, it's true that nowhere is perfect and nowhere can be (there are no utopias), but we still have to try to make the world as good as we can possibly make it, and we still need to help everyone we can help.
Let's help people.
That's all for now.
-Allie H-S
August 10, 2014
A Short Post About an Important Book
Hello, all.
I just read a The Little Prince (or Le Petit Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I realize that this is a children's book, and typically a semi-formal review post like this should probably be about some three-hundred page YA fiction or something, or maybe something even more legitimate - like maybe I should be reviewing Pride and Prejudice for you - but there'll be time for that later, and maybe that's even the point. Just because this isn't some hefty novel doesn't mean the book isn't important.
This book is very important.
I actually didn't know The Little Prince existed until fairly recently, and I only read it now because rumour has it that I'll be reading it this year in French IV. (We half-assedly read the first chapter or so in the last few weeks of French III, and I was very lost, so I think having read the English translation first will help.) But now I know it exists. And now you know, too.
The Little Prince is about adults, and everything you lose when you outgrow your childhood. It's about numbers and jobs and how we always rush about, and how everything we think has value - a big house, a career, doing everything quickly and efficiently, spending all our time finding new ways just to save some - muddles up everything that's really important, things like love and friendship and true satisfaction. It's written in a formal, solemn tone, and the narrator says that he doesn't want his book to be taken lightly, which sounds pretentious - and hey, maybe it is a bit pretentious - but the way it's written is beautiful and poetic, if a bit abstract (remember, it's a children's book; it's full of space travel and talking flowers).
Earlier this summer, during that silly Creative Writing class I took, I read Tuesdays With Morrie, which was similar to this, if a bit more straightforward in expressing its themes. It was also similar because they're both sad.
I've said this before, but I think most good books are sad. But this was also very sweet.
I think it would be nice to do an audio reading of this, so I'll look into that. In the meantime, it's 83 pages long, with large text and lots of pictures. You can easily read it in a day, so if you can get your hands on a copy, I urge you to do so. I think you'll enjoy it.
That's all.
-Allie H-S
I just read a The Little Prince (or Le Petit Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I realize that this is a children's book, and typically a semi-formal review post like this should probably be about some three-hundred page YA fiction or something, or maybe something even more legitimate - like maybe I should be reviewing Pride and Prejudice for you - but there'll be time for that later, and maybe that's even the point. Just because this isn't some hefty novel doesn't mean the book isn't important.
This book is very important.
I actually didn't know The Little Prince existed until fairly recently, and I only read it now because rumour has it that I'll be reading it this year in French IV. (We half-assedly read the first chapter or so in the last few weeks of French III, and I was very lost, so I think having read the English translation first will help.) But now I know it exists. And now you know, too.
 |
| (courtesy of: classicalcybelle.wordpress.com) |
Earlier this summer, during that silly Creative Writing class I took, I read Tuesdays With Morrie, which was similar to this, if a bit more straightforward in expressing its themes. It was also similar because they're both sad.
I've said this before, but I think most good books are sad. But this was also very sweet.
I think it would be nice to do an audio reading of this, so I'll look into that. In the meantime, it's 83 pages long, with large text and lots of pictures. You can easily read it in a day, so if you can get your hands on a copy, I urge you to do so. I think you'll enjoy it.
That's all.
-Allie H-S
August 3, 2014
Artifact Reflection 1 - And Also Happy Esther Day!
Happy Esther Day, everybody!
This post has a very specific purpose, so I'll try and keep it short, but for those of you who don't know, Esther Earl was a really amazing person who died of cancer when she was sixteen. Partly because I never actually knew Esther and partly because this post is meant to be for school, I don't think I can explain Esther Day well enough and in few enough words to keep it from dominating the post, and I certainly can't do it as well as this vlogbrothers video and the rest of the playlist it's been added to. Hank doesn't explain Esther Day until about two minutes in, but I think the entire video is very important, so I urge you to watch all of it. (It's three minutes and thirty-eight seconds long; I think you can handle it.) In short, Esther Day - August third - is a day to tell your friends and family and everybody who's important to you that you love them, and not just assume that they know. Last year, my friends and I held a party, but this year, circumstances wouldn't allow it. So I'm spreading the word this way, because the internet it powerful, and maybe somebody will read this who doesn't already know about it. Let's hope, I guess.
Right, so, to the school part of this post. I stumbled upon my first artifact for The Distance Between Us this morning! It's a newspaper article. (I am so original.) I found it in my actual physical newspaper, but that's a little harder to link to, so I have it online here. In it, Roxana Orellana talks about her recent trip to Honduras, the country she grew up in, but no longer recognizes. Like Reyna Grande, Orellana's mother moved to the United States and promised to come back for her children once she got settled. Five years later, her mother returned for her. Honduras was poor then, but not life-threatening. After Orellana moved to the United States, crime in Honduras increased dramatically, crimes such as murder happening regularly in broad daylight. "It’s different now, a place that forces kids to make adult decisions and trek in terrifying conditions hoping for better. The violence of drug traffickers and gangs has poisoned the culture, leaving wreckage that sometimes seems beyond repair."
In The Distance Between Us, Reyna returns to her hometown of Iguala, Mexico during her senior year of high school. The government has privatized the railroad since she left, and trains no longer come there. As a result, Iguala has plummeted even deeper into poverty. Like Roxana Orellana, Reyna goes to stay with her maternal grandmother, and she finds it hard to ignore the poverty that surrounds her, while as a child, it was all she knew. (At this same point in the book, I find it hard to ignore what a shallow, two-faced monster her older sister has become, while it's all that Reyna ever knew, but I figure that's a post for another day.)
In my last post, I ranted about how horrible and depressing The Distance Between Us was. I actually finished it yesterday though, and it had the happy ending it so desperately needed. And it occurs to me that those first three hundred pages of unbelievable misfortune made the last twelve pages of hope so much better. Because honestly, we would never care that Reyna graduated from college if we hadn't seen everything that had stood in her way, and we wouldn't care that she'd put her family back together if we hadn't seen everything that had torn it apart. To likely misquote Batman Begins (because that's just my style), "it takes dramatic examples to pull these people out of their apathy." As a fifteen-year-old white girl in a middle-class family, living full time in Park City, Utah, a resort town and one of the nicest cities in America, I find it is really fucking easy to spend all my time on the internet and connected with the world, and yet remain blind to all that goes on in it.
That said, I think I'm gonna read the newspaper more often. Ignorance is bliss if there's a spider in your bedroom, but when I look at the world at large, I think I'd like to know the true state of it. Maybe then I'll know how to do something of value and help it.
-Allie H-S
This post has a very specific purpose, so I'll try and keep it short, but for those of you who don't know, Esther Earl was a really amazing person who died of cancer when she was sixteen. Partly because I never actually knew Esther and partly because this post is meant to be for school, I don't think I can explain Esther Day well enough and in few enough words to keep it from dominating the post, and I certainly can't do it as well as this vlogbrothers video and the rest of the playlist it's been added to. Hank doesn't explain Esther Day until about two minutes in, but I think the entire video is very important, so I urge you to watch all of it. (It's three minutes and thirty-eight seconds long; I think you can handle it.) In short, Esther Day - August third - is a day to tell your friends and family and everybody who's important to you that you love them, and not just assume that they know. Last year, my friends and I held a party, but this year, circumstances wouldn't allow it. So I'm spreading the word this way, because the internet it powerful, and maybe somebody will read this who doesn't already know about it. Let's hope, I guess.
Right, so, to the school part of this post. I stumbled upon my first artifact for The Distance Between Us this morning! It's a newspaper article. (I am so original.) I found it in my actual physical newspaper, but that's a little harder to link to, so I have it online here. In it, Roxana Orellana talks about her recent trip to Honduras, the country she grew up in, but no longer recognizes. Like Reyna Grande, Orellana's mother moved to the United States and promised to come back for her children once she got settled. Five years later, her mother returned for her. Honduras was poor then, but not life-threatening. After Orellana moved to the United States, crime in Honduras increased dramatically, crimes such as murder happening regularly in broad daylight. "It’s different now, a place that forces kids to make adult decisions and trek in terrifying conditions hoping for better. The violence of drug traffickers and gangs has poisoned the culture, leaving wreckage that sometimes seems beyond repair."
In The Distance Between Us, Reyna returns to her hometown of Iguala, Mexico during her senior year of high school. The government has privatized the railroad since she left, and trains no longer come there. As a result, Iguala has plummeted even deeper into poverty. Like Roxana Orellana, Reyna goes to stay with her maternal grandmother, and she finds it hard to ignore the poverty that surrounds her, while as a child, it was all she knew. (At this same point in the book, I find it hard to ignore what a shallow, two-faced monster her older sister has become, while it's all that Reyna ever knew, but I figure that's a post for another day.)
In my last post, I ranted about how horrible and depressing The Distance Between Us was. I actually finished it yesterday though, and it had the happy ending it so desperately needed. And it occurs to me that those first three hundred pages of unbelievable misfortune made the last twelve pages of hope so much better. Because honestly, we would never care that Reyna graduated from college if we hadn't seen everything that had stood in her way, and we wouldn't care that she'd put her family back together if we hadn't seen everything that had torn it apart. To likely misquote Batman Begins (because that's just my style), "it takes dramatic examples to pull these people out of their apathy." As a fifteen-year-old white girl in a middle-class family, living full time in Park City, Utah, a resort town and one of the nicest cities in America, I find it is really fucking easy to spend all my time on the internet and connected with the world, and yet remain blind to all that goes on in it.
That said, I think I'm gonna read the newspaper more often. Ignorance is bliss if there's a spider in your bedroom, but when I look at the world at large, I think I'd like to know the true state of it. Maybe then I'll know how to do something of value and help it.
-Allie H-S
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)