If You're On Time, You're Late

In American Studies this week, we talked about sidewalks and how they are straight.  It's interesting that sidewalks are straight when they could be curved, but of course there is a logical answer.  The straight path is the most direct, the fastest, the shortest.  But is that always good?  Everything is based on efficiency, in the work place people try and get as much done, to sell the most things, to make the most profit.  Even in a child's life growing up, every minute is filled with some activity whether a "play-date", school, sports, or fine arts.  Where is there room in our lives for a break from all that chaos?

Vacation.  It's such a nice word. It implies relaxation, rest, a break from day to day activities, and free time. But on vacation, I seem to find myself nearly as busy, if not more so, than when in school.  My vacation time is crammed full of everything I want to do that I don't get to do when I have school.  Things like going  to the movies, hanging out with friends, traveling, having a job, playing sports, spending time with family, etc.  There is always so much to do that the vacation ends up not really being restful and relaxing, but rather a different kind of activity from what I normally do.

So then vacation isn't really a break.  There is no time built into the American culture that allows for rest.  Over the summer, I went on a mission trip to Central America.  We were told that the bus ride from where we were staying to the village we were working in would be half an hour, one way.  The ride took two and a half hours.  On the bus, I was stressed, I hate being late.  I have always been taught "if you're on time, you're late."  But when we arrived in the village, even two hours late, it didn't even make a difference to them.  They were all just happy that we were there to help.  The timing was insignificant there, why isn't it more like that here?

The Way She Was

Over the past week we have been working on picking an interviewee for a project on oral histories.  The theme for the project is connection to society, and when we interview our subjects, we are supposed to slide that in somehow.  My immediate reaction was to do a grandparent, but it was ruled out because we aren't allowed to interview grandparents.  So then I thought of people like the minister at my church, my neighbor, a family friend, etc.

Then I found the perfect subject.  A good friend of the family, a mom, a successful business woman.  She is classy, intimidating, beautiful, sharp, iconic, unique.  She wears the right clothes and works out at the gym regularly. She was also diagnosed with breast cancer just over a month ago.  I thought it would be perfect.  The "before and after" that Studs Terkel used when interviewing average people in Chicago.  My event would be the diagnosis of her breast cancer, while Terkel's was World War II.

But then I put myself in her shoes.  If I had just finished my first round of chemotherapy and was just starting to lose my hair, and I was still getting used to the idea of being sick with a disease that could potentially kill me, the only person I would talk to would be a therapist.  Probably not even family.  So why would she ever tell me how she was feeling?  I'm just a teenager doing a school project, and that's her life.  Some might say that by interviewing her I would connect her to society, open her up and let her know that everyone genuinely cares and wants to hear her story.  But I think I would be doing her a disservice by singling her out, when all she wants to do right now is blend in and go back to the "before" when she was healthy.

Do I See It?

    In American Studies, one of the biggest topics we discussed this week was media coverage.  There is always a bias to media, and a lot of the time the media that is seen is a misrepresentation of what really happened.  It happens all the time in movies and television shows and magazines, the classic collage of mismatched pictures and words that totally twist what was initially said and is very clearly fake.   It may seem clear that it's not right then, because in that sense there is a comic spin to it.  Unfortunately, there isn't a comic spin to it when it happens in reality.

    Earlier today, my mom and I were talking, and I mentioned our media discussion from in class.  My mom and I then went on to talk about other things, when Bob Dold's name popped up. Robert Dold is a Republican candidate running for Congress this year, trying to fill in Mark Kirk's old position.  My mom told me that she had been talking to someone who had told her that while on his last bus tour, Dold had been followed by a Dan Seals’ volunteer with a video camera.  (Dan Seals is who Bob Dold will be running against this November). 

         The mention of video-taping a politician made me think of a video I had seen on Youtube of Bob Etheridge.  In it a student asks Etheridge a question about whether or not he “fully supports the Obama agenda.”  Etheridge immediately asks, “who are you?” multiple times, and finally grabs the student by the arm and refuses to let go.  He then takes the phone of the student and even grabs him by the neck.  To me, after watching the video, it looked and sounded like the Congressman had assaulted this student for no apparent reason.  But after thinking twice about media, I’m not so sure.

         As the audience of this Youtube video all I can see is the one-minute video that the person who posted chooses to show.  It could be that the poster of the video had been following Etheridge around for days.  It could be that those students had been sitting outside of Congress and Etheridge’s home, constantly asking him questions or trying to annoy him.  It could be that they were just waiting for him to lose his temper and do something like “assault” them, like what happened.  Or it could be the complete opposite, that they were innocent students who merely asked the Congressman a question after a tough day and he just blew up at them.  I have no idea, or no way of finding out.

   This is exactly what we were talking about in American Studies.  Just like Mr. O'Connor said in his blog post about the potential Koran burning, when he agreed with Jimmy Fallows, that the, "media corrupts political discussions by deliberately polarizing and thereby cheapening political discussions."  In this case it could be the students deliberately showing Etheridge in a bad light.  The media skews everything we see, all that we as the public see is that one-minute snippet.  How do we know if what we see is the truth?  

I Don't Like Cats Either...

Our first assignment in American Studies was to piece together the life of our "dead" teacher, Mr. Bolos.  But the assignment wasn't really about how much we could find out that was correct, it was more of how to do research and work together as well as back up the information we found with multiple sources.  As we were doing this, I wondered what it would be like if someone tried to piece together my life based on random possessions of mine.

As I was writing down that I should do some research on Mr. Bolos in my assignment notebook, I saw a doodle from when I had been bored previously that day.  It was of a dog, and it made me smirk.  I am not a good artist; it was a standard dog that my friend had taught me how to draw in second grade.  Just a few circles jumbled together with some lines for claws and half-ovals for eyes, and ears that look like hair from the 1960s.  

Anybody who didn't know me would have assumed that I am a dog-lover, or at least somebody who likes dogs, because what other kind of person would doodle a dog in their assignment notebook?  Maybe it was my dog, or a friend's dog, or a dog that I had always dreamed of having and hoped to get in the future.  So someone would have guessed that I liked dogs, based solely on the fact that I had drawn one in my notebook.

However, if that person were to interview my family or some of my closest friends, then that person would be beyond confused.  Because all of those people would tell you that I do not like dogs.  They wouldn't be able to tell you why, even I'm not quite sure.  It might be because I never had a dog growing up, or because dogs always bark when they see me, or maybe even because my cousins' dog bit off my favorite dolls' arm when I was little.  

The point is that you can't assume things immediately and know them to be correct when you're assumption is only based on one source.  I think that this is what Mr. Bolos and Mr. O'Connor were trying to show us with our first assignment, that it is necessary to gather a variety of sources to prove a point.