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| 08:35pm 04/03/2009 |
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I just finished watching this movie:
Parts of it definitely came off as being melodramatic and it didn’t offer too much in practical everyday things a person can do to curb climate change, but it connected with a few other things I’m reading right now so I have these things swirling around in my head.
It’s a amazing paradox to me how oil and petroleum have empowered our civilization to advance in ways that we never would have thought possible a few hundred years ago, and yet at the same time caused so much damage. The fertilizers and farming techniques we use now have enabled a massive population boom that has never been seen by humans before, industrial revolution has created a surplus of goods and disposable wealth never before seen and has created a host of jobs for countless people around the globe. While doing this it has also created a multitude of other issues from climate change and huge rates of mass extinction to increased health problems like childhood asthma and poor water quality. I find it interesting that the very thing we use to produce goods for certain groups of people can end up harming others.
But (and I think this might be my point) not by harming people by default. I think the main issue with industrialization isn’t that it can provide people with more stuff, but that it can help nurture a culture of consumerism that can be so hurtful in so many ways. It seems so very critical to me to maintain perspective: that industrialization is a tool to serve the needs of people and not visa versa.
I’ve been reading this. book lately and it’s been making me think about how developing nations can lean on industrialization jobs as a means of pulling themselves out of poverty and gradually building a larger GDP. So the question arises: how does a community create empowering and dignified jobs that don’t have a negative impact on the environment and create a sustainable form of industry that will help that society both in the short and the long term?
This might be a really obvious thing to ask, but I think traditionally when I look at different forms of poverty it elects an emotional response (as it should) and I don’t look beyond that to the real causes. The more I think about it the more fascinating I find that all these different issues; environmentalism, public health, disease control, global poverty, etc. connect back to politics and public policy, it’s like it’s at the center of one massive, interwoven web.
I’m totally ranting and haven’t really said what I want to say and I’m not sure I can (I’m pretty tired and inarticulate), but I think it’s interesting the way that societies play off of each other and I’m trying to figure out in what way a person should direct their efforts towards the common good. |
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| 08:56pm 12/02/2009 |
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Also: I want to buy a new computer, I'm looking for a laptop around $500 or so, a fairly large hard drive with at least 2 gig of RAM. Any suggestions? |
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| "Beauty" |
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| 08:44pm 12/02/2009 |
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I think it’s amazing how frequently conceptions of ‘beauty’ or ‘normalcy’ are based on fabrications and fictions (yes I like alliteration). Not just in the world of fashion and ascetics but also in our general world view about how society and people operate. How often does it happen where some impressionable youth mistake something satirical for reality and try to impersonate it? Or even worst, internalize it and curse themselves for not being able to embody something that isn’t real.
It’s worth mentioning that the part I found most striking was the part where they used Photoshop on the image and changed the physical construct of her body. To me that clearly drove home the point that there are some things that no matter how hard you strive to embody, you can’t because it isn’t based on reality. It goes beyond the way that people look and also into the way that people act.
I’ve seen it a few times where the kids I work with see a character (comic, cartoon etc) that isn’t real and for whatever reasons begin to impersonate idiosyncrasies that aren’t their own. To an extent I don’t’ think it’s necessarily a bad thing, partly it’s just connected to growing up and tying out different personas and seeing what fits you as a person. The tragedy comes in once a person starts to loose the distinction between what’s uniquely their own and what’s adopted.
Two examples:
1) When I was little I used to read Calvin and Hobbes a lot (a great comic which actually helped me learn how to read when I was growing up). I always knew it was funny (although I didn’t always understand why) and so I began to parrot comments they would make in the strip to see if I could invoke the same kind of response (I never really did and thankfully I grew out of that).
2) I was hanging out with a few people once and for some reason one of them casually made a really weird comment in a strange growl-ly voice (sadly I don’t remember the comment, only the voice), and none of us really understood why. It turned out they were quoting a movie and had done it so often with their friends that it just kinda became a normal thing (I catch myself doing that all the time with Napoleon Dynamite and Anchorman).
I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing for companies to be showing their products in a ascetically pleasing light (it’s to be expected), but there’s something sad and tragic happening when people’s expectations are manipulated as collateral damage. |
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| 09:39am 05/02/2009 |
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Last night a few students held a public showing of this documentary. There were a number of guest speakers, including a few members from the Public Health Department, and was followed by a really interesting conversation. We were talking about how the area where we live completely affects the status of our health, not just whether you live by mountains or in a desert, but what kind of community resources are in your neighborhood. It makes me think of the area around the school I work in. There are a number of people who have health problems, who don’t eat healthy and nutritious food and get little exercise (which increases the likelihood of high-cholesterol, heart problems etc.), but then you look at what the community has available. There are soo many cheap (but filling) fast food places around here that can provide you with an absurd amount of calories per serving, and if you’re a kid growing up in a low-income community it totally makes sense to buy that ‘two for 1$’ deal at taco bell because it fills you up and you’re probably not aware (or care) about what the nutritional value of those French fries are and what your nutritional needs are, plus you’re hungry anyway and you know this is going to fill you up. So then it starts to connect to education and showing youth the importance of good nutrition, which starts to turn it into policy decisions.
Something that really struck me during this conversation was how often the word “hope” popped up. Granted it’s become a huge buzz word ever since Barak started campaigning, but something a lot of people commented on was the need for long-term opportunities for youth. At one point in the documentary they were talking to a group of middle school-ers, and none of them expected to live to the age of 20 because of the gang violence in their neighborhood. This sets the tone for somebody’s life, how can you tell a kid to eat healthy and exercise because it’ll help them when their older, and they don’t think they’re going to make it to 20.
I don’t think there’s any one group or policy that you can point at and blame (public health can be hugely complicated and it’s amazing how many issues are interwoven into it), but I do think that in the end what it really boils down to is building strong communities with a culture of caring, and easily assessable (and affordable) alternatives and creating an environment where we aren’t alienated from our neighbors (I’ve lived in the same place for over a year and I still don’t know who lives next door). The question is how do we go about doing that…any thoughts? |
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| E360 |
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| 01:19pm 02/02/2009 |
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A few weeks ago I was asked to sit on a panel for E360. It’s a program that helps students start their own businesses and gives them grants to help them get up and running. This is really closely related to my Youth Venture program (I focus on nonprofits and Clubs and they focus on businesses), so they asked me to help critique some business plans. I’ve been doing this kind of thing a lot lately so I didn’t really think much about it. Then I actually got to the panel. There where five other people on the panel and I was the only person that wasn’t either a CEO, Director or held a Ph.D. At first it was one of those ‘oh crap I should’ve prepared or worn something more then a T-shirt and jeans’ moments, but after the presentations started getting underway we all started getting into it and it was just really cool to see local entrepreneurs encouraging local youth to become active participants in their communities. None of them where as community focused as I would have like to see, but it was still impressive how seriously the students took their projects and how much thought and foresight went into the planning process. We gave out three grants and I’m working with another one of the teams to launch them as a Youth Venture. As frustrated as I feel with my job sometimes, it’s really encouraging to see something like this take place and know that there are kids who are more active then I was when I was in high-school.
For more info, below are two articles from the ProJo about the competition:
http://www.projo.com/business/content/BZ_MET_BUSINESS_PLAN_01-23-09_KAD1SA4_v13.34c3495.html
http://www.pbn.com/detail/39693.html |
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| 01:51pm 06/12/2008 |
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Classic Heather Quote:
Heather: “ I think we both use Metafilter for very different reasons, I look at it and go ‘”Ohh! A really interesting article on gender equality” you look at it and go “Ohh! A walrus playing the saxophone’” |
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| 02:14pm 04/12/2008 |
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Below is an email one of the teachers at my school wrote about one of my teams. If you have a chance Please go to this website and vote for them. You can also vote for them by texting BBYV25 to the number 32075.
Hello friends, family, and educators!
A number of my students are in a Youth Venture group called the Resychos who are working on some really great projects this year and next year.
They can be one of 15 groups to win $10,000 to use for some crazy projects here at school, and you can help!
All you need to do is vote for them (and one other group), here, at:
www.genv.net/bestbuy
You can vote Once a Day, so Please, Keep On Voting!
Also, spread the word, share the email, post a link, send it to your friends and students.
Help our students help our world, our school, and our community, to help our environment!
So far they have accomplished:
-Beginning and maintaining paper and container recycling at Peace St.
for the first time ever, and recycling thousands of pounds of paper waste and drinking containers.
-They have also planted a memory garden in honor of a student who passed on.
-Beginning and maintaining composting at Peace.
-Recording our first Resychos song-The Tomato Song.
Projects we are currently working on and which will be helped hugely by this grant include:
-Converting a bus to run as a Veggie Oil/Diesel hybrid.
-Constructing and Maintaining a Community garden in our neighborhood that is used as a community education center -Reducing energy dependency at Peace St. and adding Solar Energy to the school -Creating a sing along CD of environmentally themed music.
-Creating and sharing a brief DVD documenting all of these projects and ways we can all improve our impact on the community.
-Educational trips with the Magic Veggie Bus to present to schools about ways that they can get involved in helping the environment, sharing our DVD, live music, and educational activities around alternative fuels, urban gardening, recycling, and solar power.
So again, please cast your vote here, and do it every day if you can!
www.genv.net/bestbuy
Thank you so much!
--
Michael David Gore |
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| 02:44pm 15/07/2008 |
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I really enjoy what I’ve been doing this year and I like being in a position where I get to be at the center of a newly created program that’s already in such demand and scaling out so quickly, but it’s kind of annoying that it’s part of such a huge program with so much bureaucratic oversight. I work within an alternative school system as the representative of this huge Nonprofit creating this new partnership. I had maybe four or five days of training before being shipped off to another state where I’ve been left for the last year to try and figure how to do this. So far it’s been going alright but the times I feel the most frustrated is when I’m in contact with my main office. They’re good people doing good work, but it’s a hieratical system that works from the top down instead of the bottom up. There’s a lot of systematic organizational stuff going on, but not a lot of direct involvement with the people they’re working with. There’s a lot of distance.
I wrote a paragraph description a few weeks ago that explains who we are and what we do. This is going to be used at Big Bang-a huge nation wide conference where all the schools get together and talk about new programs and plans for next year. I’m using this as a launching point to bring my program up to a nationwide level, and will be holding workshops for dozens of principals and teachers across the country (no pressure). But it’s weird because even though I have very little interaction or exposure the whole YV world I still have to conform to trademark and copywrite phrases. I’m so isolated with what I’m doing that it’s easy to forget there’s other people working for the same company (the fact that I think of it as a company and not a nonprofit seems meaningful in itself).
The director asked me to rewrite the paragraph with ® and ©, which is no big deal, but it’s becoming symbolic of how even through I have huge amounts of freedom within this group (at times an intimidating amount), I’m still not where I want to be. I'm starting to get itchy feet and getting tired of working in a high-school. Honestly I’ll be fine doing this for another year but after that I’m really looking forward to the prospect of gong back to school. This place in Arkansas is so kickass, I’m really excited about being surrounded by people with similar passions who are enthusiastic about being active in the world. One more year. |
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| Road Trippin!! |
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| 06:11pm 27/06/2008 |
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"As some of you may already know, I'm planning a cross-country road trip this summer. Want to come for all or part? I'm serious - give me a shout if you do.
We have a tentative list! Unfortunately, Mexico, Southwestern U.S., and the South are not going to happen in this trip. Highlights include getting to see some cities in the midwest I haven't seen, spending time in Chicago and looking at schools out there, spending some time in every awesome city on the West Coast (duh!), the Redwoods (which are amazing), seeing Seattle for the first time, and runing across the country with some crazy cool amazing people.
Please please please comment if you live in any of the following places or know someone that I also know who lives in any of the following places. We're lookin out both for people to see and for places to stay, especially in the less trendy cities in our itinery.
Friday, July 25: leave Providence
Friday, July 25 or Saturday, July 26: Buffalo, NY
Saturday July 26 thru Monday 28: Chicago, IL
Tuesday July 29: Madison, WI; St.Paul/Minneapolis, MN
Wednesday July 30: Rapid City, SD (Mt. Rushmore)
Thursday July 31: Yellowstone Park, Wyoming
Thursday/Friday July 31/August 1: probably camping somewhere in Montana, Idaho, or Western Washington. Anyone have an idea?
Friday Aug 1: Ellensberg, WA; Seattle, WA
Saturday August 2 - Sunday August 3: Seattle, WA; Olympia, WA (Kaaaaate?)
Monday Aug 4: Portland, OR
Tuesday/Wednesday Aug 5-6: Arcada/Humboldt County, CA (anyone?)
Thursday Aug 7 - Sunday Aug. 10: San Francisco/Bay Area
Monday Aug. 11 - Wednesday Aug. 13: Los Angeles
Wednesday/Thursday Aug. 14: Las Vegas
Thursday Aug. 14 - Saturday Aug. 16: Denver, CO; Boulder, CO
Saturday/Sunday Aug. 16-17: Omaha, Nebraska (anyone?)
Sunday/Monday Aug. 17-18: Iowa City, IA (open to other places in Iowa, too. Anyone?)
Monday Aug. 18 - Thursday Aug. 21: Chicago, IL
Thursday/Friday Aug. 21-22: somewhere in Pennslyvania or New York
Friday/Saturday Aug. 22-23: New York City
Monday Aug. 25: Back to work in Providence.
Additionally, we're obviously open to juggling this around within certain constraints. Give me a shout out if you've got a place recommendation |
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| 11:48am 10/06/2008 |
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| 09:44pm 12/05/2008 |
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Ok, looking back I’ve realized that I only really use my livejournal to make vague comments about life when I’m either stressed or mad about something. If you were to look through my last few entries it would seem like I’m normally angry and bitter about something, which really isn’t true. Just a FYI.
Work is really the only thing I have going on right now, work and the landtrust. I’ve officially signed my life away for another year as a VISTA in RI, and as much as I like what I’m doing and even though it’s going well (they keep hinting that they want to make this a ‘full time’ position for me, like, a real job and not a VISTA thing) I don’t think I want to stay beyond that. There’s too much other stuff in the world I want to work on and get involved with. Starting these little nonprofits is a good stepping stone for what I want to be doing, but it’s not engaging social issues on the level that I want to be on, not yet anyway.
I’ve found this amazing school in Little Rock Arkansas that sounds like it was custom made for me. A lot of what you do in this program is direct involvement with different NGOs, both in local community and internationally, building resources and getting involved, I freaking love it. Someday I would really like to help recreate a place like Biloxi where everyone had this strong communal feeling of togetherness and intense bonding, while doing a ton of incredibly creative and beneficial work. Yea, I’d like to create something like that with a component that teaches youth the importance of sustainability, sort of like the farms that Trevor and Mike ran, (I’m wishing I spent more time with those guys in college and that I took more advantage of stuff like canticle farm, but at least I got exposed to it). I was hanging out with this guy today who built the first Biodiesel luxury RV and this guy was so freaking well informed and knowledgeable, he built a borderline perpetual-motion machine on his dashboard just for shits and giggles for crying out loud! How do you respond to something like that?
It’s crazy and amazing and cool, it’s people like that who really inspire me in life and make me want to keep going and try to do something with myself. I just kinda wish I had more to offer. |
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| 06:33pm 08/05/2008 |
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Fuck Seven Corners |
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| umm...yea |
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| 11:51am 23/01/2008 |
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Do you ever realized that you really fucked something up? Is there a choice you made that you regret and wish you could take back? Sometimes I really wish life had an ‘undo’ button and you could go back and erase something and it never would have happened. Like a huge delete button and whatever is bothering you just disappears and fades away like a bad mist.
It’s a sad feeling when you choose between two options and then realize you did the wrong thing. It’s like there’s this parallel world moving on right next to you that see and imagine but never experience, you’re separated from it by a film of glass, by a poor choice. How do you come back from such a thing? It’s difficult to realize you messed something up in life and nothing you can’t make it better, the only thing you can do is learn from your mistake and work towards not doing the same thing next time around. But it’s all the more frustrating when it’s a lesson you thought you had already learned, and horrible when it’s something you had promised not to repeat.
Life: It’s about holding on and letting go and knowing when to do which. |
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| 11:17am 27/11/2007 |
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Regardless of how stressed, overwhelmed and (sometimes) ineffective I feel, I still LOVE working nonprofit. I was just reading about one of the upcoming Ashoka fellows whose been working his whole life to turn passive Christian theology into engaging social action. He might be teaming up with YV to help create a culture of youth-led social activism. It’s just inspiring and encouraging to realize that there’s people who care a great deal about the conditions of humanity and have worked their whole life to improve the lives of others. I think it’s incredible and I want so much for my own life to reflect that philosophy of interpersonal care. People can be great [:o)
Peace
TJ |
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| 01:35pm 15/11/2007 |
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Q: How stressed?
A: SOO stressed |
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| 10:23pm 09/11/2007 |
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The little old man lived on top of a hill that overlooked the village. He lived by himself in a little hut, but not alone. Some people keep pets, these animals kept him. They lived with him and shared his space, he fed them and talked to them and though they never understood what he meant, the loved him in that innocent and trusting way that only animals can. There was much love in the small hut on top of the hill.
He know that the waters were coming. He went down to the village to beseech the townspeople to act while they had time and prepare for a new way of life. But they scorned him and claimed he was jealous of their friendships, that they had people to talk to while he had only birds and beasts.
He left them sad, not for the comments on his humble life, but for the lives that they would soon loose out of foolishness and pride.
He built a boat for himself and his animals and as he clamed, the rains fell down and filled the lakes and the creeks and crept up on the sleeping villagers.
The water filled the valleys and climbed their way up the little old man’s hill where they picked up his floating machery and carried him away.
He traveled until the days became weeks, the weeks months and the months years.
One day the rains stopped and he found himself in a strange land with buildings so high that even now they still shown over the waters.
He got out to inspect one of these buildings as his shop went by. A strong wind carried his boat off without him. Stranded he could do nothing but wait for the water to recede again.
The water raised and raised until he found himself on the highest point of the highest tower, then the rains stopped for good. But the waters did not go down. For all I know he waits there still, hoping to be found by his animals. What happened to them I don’t know, but I suspect that they found their way to where they were going. Yes, they got there allright and on a small hill a world away they wait for him.
- story from one of my old journals
Sometimes as I lie in my bed, a moment away from sleep, my minds drifts to a sea half a world away. And there, above the white powder sand and beneath the clockwork of the sky, I find peace. In the rhythmic fall of waves and the forgetful call of birds. And my mind drifts further, pursing to other moments of peace in my life, moments of serenity and contentedness, the woods of a friary, an abandoned golf course behind a church, a rock on a cliff. These are places what identify not just a location, but a mentality and a emotion. An entire mood of being wraped up benith a tree or in a field. There are so many places and people in the world that I miss, in this land of gravel and broken glass I feel such a vast disconnect, not from the work but from the people. More then anything I long for a community, a family of support and desire that I can give something too. I miss all of my countless people scattered across the world and hope to be near them again.
I’ve been going through some of my old journals and I found this story I wrote years and years ago, it speaks strongly to isolation so it seems appropriate. Sometimes I feel like I used to be so much smarter then I am now, or that I was much more reflective or analytical. You hear stories about how the worries of the world can fade your idealism and I’m horrified that it could happen to me. I hope I never loose the values and idealism I’ve been obsessed with for so long, and sometimes I wonder if I already have and if now I’m only living from a pattern, which I pray is not the case. I hat writing in my live journal because I usually feel so mellow dramatic, but I haven’t bought a new journal yet so this works for now. |
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tjvagabond004's journal