The Paw Print

A few years ago, I started seeingp eople sporting t-shirts and buttons proclaiming, “Music is the Weapon of the Future”. 

“Yeah right,” I remember thinking.  Music has an unparalleled way of bringing people together.  Yet how could flimsy sheets of music and instruments protect us from guns and bombs? The documentary “Playing For Change” convinced me that music is a viable way to create a more peaceful world.

“Playing For Change” began with the performance of Roger Ridley, a street musician in Santa Monica, California who inspired Mark Johnson to travel around the world with a film crew, recording musicians’ songs of peace and harmony.  He went to the poorest townships in South Africa where 70% of the population has AIDS, to post- Katrina New Orleans, Northern Ireland, Israel, Sub – Saharan Africa, and Himalayan India, among other places. None of the musicians met in person, yet they were able to sing in unison by listening to each other via headphones.  Johnson and his crew edited together the recordings and videos.  The product is so beautiful and moving that it practically hurts to watch.

Perhaps the final product is so good because of the quality of the musicians who performed.  Johnson did not seek out the world’s pop stars (though Bono and several other internationally recognized musicians perform).  He went to nearly every continent recording vastly different artists, including street performers.  Yet Johnson’s team uses the video and audio clips they collected in an original and engaging way.  Among others, the video of Bob Marley’s song, “War, No More Trouble” is amazing to watch.  I love the way that the filmmaker wove together clips of today’s musicians playing that song with old footage of Bob Marley performing the song in concert.  Johnson’s documentary is an innovative work of art.

Perhaps music cannot be used as a weapon in the traditional sense.  Do we really need any more bombs and guns? According to Greenpeace International, a worldwide organization that campaigns to protect the environment and promote peace, the 27,000 nuclear weapons on earth could destroy all life many times over.  Music unites rather that divides. Even the boundaries of different genres of music do not bind musicians.  Every great movement has had music that motivated and bonded people.  Even Joseph Stalin recognized the power of music to overthrow injustice.  He did not allow any music to be played in his presence. 

Music is one thing that we all have in common.  Perhaps it can be the fuel and binding glue for a global outcry to save both human life and the ecosystem that we call home.  This documentary is a testament to the fact that people of different musical and regional backgrounds can come together.  As one musician in the documentary said, “because music knows no boundaries, knows no races, [it is] possible to bring peace around the world.”

    Immigrants shipped back to their country, and no, they are not in trouble with the law. That was the story making headlines in the July 29^th, 2009 edition of The New York Times. I was initially drawn to this story because it is very interesting how people who are homeless and immigrants can be shipped back to their country and the city is paying for it. Basically it is a one-way ticket paid by the City of New York to that family’s homeland or home state if they are enrolled in a city shelter. This option is presented to them if they no longer want to stay in the city. The city sees this as an alternative because city shelters are sometimes too expensive to enroll one family. The way it works is the family is asked if the person has someone to stay with in another place. If that person agrees, the social worker investigates the information, and then ships them off. This project has been going on since 2007. Personally, I think it’s a good idea because there’s a lot of people whose main reason for coming to New York City is in search of a new life and new experiences, and if it is not being offered of course they might just want to go back. If it is not happening here and they don’t have the cash to go back to their country, this program can definitely help. I think it would be more useful and effective now that lots of people are losing their jobs and if you’re an immigrant and don’t have enough money and end up homeless you have an option. Those who don’t have family somewhere else? You’re kind of screwed for now.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/nyregion/29oneway.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=New%20York%20aids%20the%20homeless%20with%20one%20way%20&st=cse

“The UglyTruth” is a typical comedy/love story with good characters to back it up. The main characters were Katherine Heigl and Gerald Butler.  While Heigl played her usual role of cute and insecure girl in comedies,Gerald Butler went away from his big manly character in “300. ” Butler plays an arrogant character who became increasingly successful with his TV show about what relationships are really based on, which he claims is lust and sex. While the movie has a lot of good humor in it, it can become boring at points because it is so predictable.  First Heigl hates the show, then when she is forced to work with this man she becomes closer to him and slowly falls in love.  Her role was a lot like her role in “Knocked Up,” where she had to adjust to being around Seth Rogen, whom she became pregnant with.  Now she must adjust to being around a man who stands for beliefs that she despises, yet begins to see the truth in as time goes by.  This movie is good to see in theaters with a couple of friends, but seeing it again would be quite distasteful.  This unknown humor in Gerald Butler has rarely been seen before, and this movie may open more movie watchers up to his different skill sets.  He was the best part of the movie, although he got a bit corny at times, which is not his fault but the directing.  Robert Luketic directed a cute film with good actors, but certainly did not present anything special to viewers that has not been seen before.

I was recently told the story of a teenage girl who thought her grandma was in the hospital for something minor and as a result she didn’t visit her. When the grandma called her at midnight one weekday, the granddaughter gave her attitude for waking her and hung up.

Unexpectedly, the next day the grandma died and the girl has said she is filled with an overwhelming feeling of sadness and anguish.

    This story got me thinking about regret. Throughout life people always come across instances they wish they could go back and change, some more drastic than others. If we had the chance, I’m sure many people would re-do many situations differently from the way it originally played out. But I can’t help but wonder when the phrase”everything happens for a reason” applies and when having remorse is something we just have to live with.

    People generally only have regrets when something tragic happens, like a sudden death of a family member or the loss of a job. We look back and wonder what we could have done differently. How if we had one more chance we would fix what we screwed up. But does life really work like that? Can we really avoid tragedies by being just heroic people all the time?

    Fulton Oursler once said “Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves – regret for the past and fear of the future.”
   I am a strong believer that we can use the past to detect the future. If we are able to learn from our mistakes, then we can avoid problems in the future. But when a mistake is far too grand to forget, are we capable of accepting fate and just letting go? 

   I figure growing up comes with a series of mistakes we’d like to take back, and challenges we’ve tried to overcome. Being an adult is about becoming mature and taking the more logical path. So what about those rebellious people who defy the norm and don’t follow the rule book? Are there always consequences for the chances they take, or should people just live in the moment? Does anybody ever know how risky they’re being unless something bad happens to them? Does anyone ever know how to live their life, and if so, how could they know?

What role does regret really play, and how do we use it to move forward in life?



 

John Williams is a tall man who is hard to miss with his confident demeanor and projecting voice.

A photojournalist at Newsday, he has accomplished more in his career that some journalists ever dream of, including winning the Pulitzer prize for his work in Rwanda.  

But meeting him in our small secluded classroom, he made a point that it isn’t about money or success but doing something he truly believes in and cares about.

“If you don’t enjoy reporting and like what you do, you won’t do as good of a job. When you love it, you see journalism differently.” (I might not have gotten the exact quote…sorry)

This was the speech he shared before he went into the story of his own career.

Being a photojournalist, he hadn’t discovered his calling for photography until a bit late in the game- when he was 24 and out of college.

Being an incoming senior, I figure the deadline to know our future career path is by sophomore year of college, if not sooner. But in retrospect it really doesn’t matter when you find your “calling,” but what you do with it when you know.

Williams’s calling has led him to take beautiful pictures of some of the most monumental moments in history, such as the inauguration ceremony of President Barack Obama. He has also gained the privilege of traveling around the world to places in Africa and the Middle East. He informs us that his commuting can be quite dangerous, always anxious when leaving for another trip across seas. But his work is also crucial, it is important for the people to be informed about the issues occurring across the world and to never forget how fortunate we are.

In a nutshell, Williams is the kind of reporter I hope to be someday. My favorite types of articles are human interest, and to be able to make a difference through something I enjoy is an ideal dream.

Anyone can write about the latest celebrity scandal, but to be able to reach out to people from another culture and have them open up to you about their lives is what makes journalism a beautiful and miraculous profession. 

What, I ask, is intelligence? Can anybody give me a definition? Is intelligence measured by how well one does on an entrance exam, an SAT? It’s funny that you answer no to the former because that is exactly what American society has brainwashed us to believe.

Here in New York we’ve got all kinds of tests to “measure intelligence,” from pre-kindergarten and kindergarten entrance exams, to Gifted & Talented tests that only continue our society’s obsession with the hierarchy system, to tests measuring how up to par one is on their reading ability, and more recently the Regents exam.

As a student in a competitive high school where report card day is often the greatest example of the school’s theatrical ability, with students sobbing, screaming, and sharpening the X-Acto knives they’d like to puncture the teachers with, a lot of emphasis is put on tests such as the Regents, PSAT and SAT. Starting in ninth grade, we’re pressured to believe that the Regents are evidence of how smart one really is and that they’re looked at when applying to colleges but believe me, it’s all a farce.

First off, the Regents were instilled by former President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act in order to ensure that well, no child would be left behind, something that would supposedly be proved by how well one scored on a test. In actuality, the Regents are used by New York State to, as mentioned earlier, continue the hierarchy system by showing which schools have the highest scoring students and are deemed “better than” and “smarter than” and honestly, is just a way for the state as a whole to prove to the rest that our schools are the best. It’s been sad to see how hard kids study and waste money on those small, red Barron’s books for a test that only gives the City bragging rights.

Interestingly enough, my school loves to complain about how its students could’ve improved on the various tests when the blame really lies in the teachers who start training for these Army-like exams two months prior to the tests. However, too much blame cannot be put on these teachers for basically carrying out the orders set by the Board of Education officials constantly breathing down their necks. The real blame lies in the creators of such tests that claim to test how ready an individual is to go to the next grade and more importantly, college.

My friend once told me that when her older sister, now a sophomore at SUNY at Geneseo, was applying to the school they had two checkboxes which basically asked whether she had a Regents diploma or not. For those knowledgeable about the test, we know that it comes in two forms, Regents and Advanced Regents, the latter of which basically means one has taken and passed more tests. This fact interested me and made me smirk a little because with so much pressure put on how these grades will look on transcripts to colleges, everyone’s desired destination, it’s funny to see that colleges could really care less.

According to the article called, “Moon or Mars?  ‘Next giant leap’ sparks debate,”  scientists plan on traveling to the moon by 2020. The astronauts would inhabit the moon for six months by the year 2025. NASA’s goal is to make the astronauts feel at home on the moon in order to prepare them for their next possible journey: to Mars.  If they are able to live on the moon, why not Mars? $0 NASA plans on replacing the space shuttles with a new fleet, once called the “Apollo on Steroids.” This is the same vehicle that landed the astronauts on the moon six times during the ’60s and ’70s.  The scientists will use new and improved technologies but essentially the same design. If NASA were to go through with this plan, it would cost them up to $100 billion but they are currently looking for alternatives. $0$0  In the past, astronauts and the space cargo were carried in the same shuttle, but this time around there will be two shuttles to bring both the astronauts and cargo separately. With the new and improved space shuttle, astronauts will be able to land anywhere on the moon. In the beginning, the astronauts will only go to the moon for seven-day periods in order to set up some facilities. After that, they will travel to Mars for up to 180 days. Scientists think this will be a huge stepping stone for their trip to Mars. If they can survive this and Mars, who knows how far humans will get. We may even be able to travel to other planets in the Milky Way and study them in a more intimate way–although we will have to see how the trip to the moon goes. It all depends on whether the astronauts feel it’s safe enough to continue exploring. $0$0 There are so many possibilities and to think humans have made it this far. Soon we may be able to really travel into the depths of space. The future leaves us with so many questions and all of them left unanswered. Hopefully astronauts will help the public understand what space holds for mankind after having had more experience outside of Earths atmosphere.$0