Author: s.lee42

“The Scythians” by Alexander Blok, is a poem about a certain ethnic group of people. Aft first, I thought this poem was about oppression and how this group in Asia and how they eventually grew from it or became too involved and started to enjoy what they were doing and that did not sit well with the Europeans. The author of this poem is describing how the group sees the Europeans for who they are and how the Europeans sees the group. I later researched what a Scythian was a found they were Eurasian nomads who inhabited the western and central Eurasian steppes from about the 9th century BC until about the 1st century BC. They were known for their distinct art and the first people to master mounted warfare which was also used by the Mongolians. I kind of saw the poem a little bit different because they were originally from Europe and moved and became nomads and eventually established and controlled a vast trade network connecting Greece, Persia, India and China.

This picture was taken last Wednesday when the Nor’easter came to New York. I was walking outside because I had to quickly buy loose leaf paper for school, so I went to the Walgreen that you can see in the right side of the picture. I didn’t think the weather was going to be this bad, as you can see, people had umbrella, all I was wearing were some sneakers and a jacket with a hood. Yeah, those sneakers and socks definitely got wet from all the slush mixture containing ice, water, and dirt. Snow was blowing furiously into my face and covering my glasses to the point where I had to take them off to see where I was walking. Looking back, I probably should have waited another day or been more prepared to go outside during the snow storm. This storm lasted the whole day and going a little into the night and was difficult to tread. If I recall, this picture was taken around afternoon time like around 1 or 2 ish.

Directed to professor Ian:

I unfortunately did not get to read the feedback that you recently sent out on Black Board, but I do remember the things that you mentioned for my first draft. You made a lot of grammar and spelling check for me, like capitalizing names of places and companies, which I greatly appreciated. At the end, you wrote that I should finish off my essay with what I think the definition of home is and to go more in dept with it. I briefly did mention it in the beginning, however never got to give evidence or elaborate on it towards the end of the essay. This also gave me some inspiration to get to the word count minimum.

For this walk, I took a picture of the sky. I took this picture because I noticed that the clouds formed a pattern and the clouds were only this “shape” in a specific part of the sky. This was super interesting to me and as soon as I got home I looked up what this might mean because some people have studied the ways clouds form and what it can mean. What I found really interesting about this shape that the clouds created is like they are super compact and close together, yet there is so much more space they can escape to, like they’re trapped or bound within two invisible lines in the sky. When I researched the possible meanings of these clouds, one of them described these clouds to be cirrocumulus clouds, the article wrote that these clouds carry ice crystals and the water droplets that do fall from these clouds are at a very chilled state. And once these cirrocumulus clouds are spread out evenly on the sky, it means that rain will occur during 8-10 hours. I found this information so fascinating. It’s funny because there will be a snowstorm that is going to happen tomorrow, so it’s either a big coincidence or real facts. It’s so mind blowing that we can tell so much just from the ways that clouds appear on the sky. I’m inspired to keep looking around for small things that I may not notice, and they could mean so many different things.

“Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space” by Brent Staples

Right off the bat, Brent Staples talks about his first “victim” of fear due to his skin color. She was a white woman who started walking quicker and quicker until she was practically running down the street once she saw him. This was the author’s first encounter with people discriminating and racial profiling in the streets. Brent Staples in trying to make a point that racial profiling is still a big problem that occurs everyday and it is very difficult to walk around as a black man in the streets. I agree with this statement because due to past criminal history and similar cases, people correlate things like : mugging, rape, or gang violence with black males in America. That’s why the lady in the beginning and most of the people today feel and it’s unfortunate. It’s also difficult for people like Staples to be walking at night, especially since he is a night walker as stated in the writing, because your life can be in danger at any moment. He doesn’t feel safe with the security of the police or some homeowners and it’s definitely a problem in the U.S with racism and abuse of power.

This is a picture of the street that my apartment is located. My apartment is all the way down the street and is the building with the white and black painted walls, as if the painter was too lazy to finish painting. There wasn’t a real reason for me taking this picture and uploading it to my blog, but it was the only picture I had that I didn’t use for my walks. During this walk, it was around 1:00 pm and it was a nice weather, not too cold and not too warm. I have walked this path probably millions of times (literally) and I don’t take the time and observe this street anymore. I could hear the children from the elementary school (the building on the right side of the picture) probably because they were having recess or something. I used to be there when I was younger, playing tag with my friends at that same school. It almost felt like another life time; I can’t imagine how I’ll feel reminiscing my past when I’m even older, like 50 years old or something, maybe I won’t remember a thing.

Jane Jacobs, in “The uses of sidewalks: safety” writes about the safety of populated streets and how it can create a safer environment for the city’s civilians. She writes how the most important thing to keep a city’s streets safe for its people is to have a community effort to protect each other, to keep watch of each other. She also refers to this as “eyes on the street”. Lauren Elkin, in”Long Island” writes about her transition from a suburb to the city in New York. She prefers the city because she feels safer, providing evidence for Jacobs’ claim. She also includes how everything is so accessible compared to the suburb where she is from. Although she prefers to live in the city, she reminiscences her time living in Long Island and the stores and the place she was raised in.

Open Hood

 

Home, according to Merriam-Webster, has many definitions. One of them is “one’s place of residence”. Another is “a familiar or usual setting”. A third: “a place of origin”. There are more than ten different definitions but I decided to narrow it down. Home is a very broad word, but simultaneously can also be a very specific word. So, what is the right definition of home? Home, in my opinion, is not a still, absolute place but more of something that evolves and changes, where you obtain experiences and grow. There are as much unique homes as there are different humans. An individual can consider their home to be their apartment, or neighborhood, or even country. Depending on their home, it can affect how they act and view certain points.

Many people do consider their home to be their country of birth, also known as their mother country, however I do not share those feelings. I was born in South Korea, but moved to the U.S. when I was a one year old and have been living at my current home ever since. I don’t feel connected to Korea the way that others feel about their mother country or homeland. Home is something you should have personal feelings towards, something you never want to change because it is a part of you.

As I walk through my home, I notice how much has changed. I have seen my home evolve. I have seen the construction of new buildings that have replaced old buildings that were torn down a couple years prior. There was a house next to my apartment that was destroyed and replaced by a newer house. Every day I would come back from school and hear the noise of construction. CLUNK CLUNK CLUNK and RIZZZZ, the sounds of drills and hammers running through my head   that was a fun experience. I have seen new roads being built and new trees being planted on the streets. I would consider myself to be privileged in a sense because living in my home is very convenient. There is the subway station that has the M and R trains (which conveniently also stop at popular stations where you can transfer to other trains, such as: 74th Roosevelt, Queens Plaza, 59th Lexington, 42nd Street Times Square, and others.) and two malls where I spent most of my time with my friends since it was so easily accessible (Queens Center Mall and the newly constructed one in Rego Park), my elementary school is literally one block from my apartment and my middle school is 4 blocks. Since I lived near school most of my life, going into high school was a big deal because I was required to take the subway to attend school. Learning the MTA map and what and where the unique trains and the stations, filled with different and inspired culture, was a pain to deal with. I was never good at looking at maps and memorizing directions. However, Manhattan is very plain and simple. It is a grid where the streets increase/decrease vertically and avenues ascend/descend horizontally. There is Elmhurst Hospital a couple of blocks away, where I went when I broke my arm in second grade. There is the LIRR (Long Island Rail Road) that goes across Broadway and if it is quiet enough in my apartment, I can hear the distant sound of the train going by routinely. There is Broadway Park where I spent most of my childhood playing and meeting new friends that I would forget the next day. There is my barber who I have been going to since we moved here   so seventeen years   who has also watched me grow from childhood. There is the supermarket two blocks away that we have been going to for years and where we get our usual food supplies. There are the street fruit sellers that sometimes we can get two avocados for $1, if we’re lucky. There is the laundromat that my family go to weekly even though we have washers and dryers in the basement of the apartment. Probably because the washers and dryers in the basement are always full. There is the street adjacent to the LIRR that leads to a highway, where you can get a perfect view of the sunset. If I come home around the time the sun sets (around 5:30) I can catch a glimpse of the purple sky and the dark clouds that surround an orange semi-circle on the walk home from the station. These are only some of the things that pop out into my head when I think of my home.

Just like myself, my home has grown. It has shaped me to be who I am today, it has created experiences for me that others may not have gone through. I have seen many residents move away. There was a big Korean community living in Elmhurst when we moved in, but many of the Korean residents moved away one by one to Flushing or Bayside. Then there were Hispanic families who also eventually moved to other places like Corona. Like birds, they migrated with the flock. If I had lived in a different home, I definitely would be a changed person. I would not ever switch my home for someone else’s and hopefully neither would they. Why would you want to change the main thing that makes you you?

Home to me, is a place where I can feel secure and express myself. It is where my friends and family are and it doesn’t have to be a physical setting. Home is where I gain experiences, life lessons. It can also be where traumatic events that affected me took place. So when I say that my home evolves with me, am I just saying that I evolve and as I grow, my perception of home evolves? If someone were to ask me where I’m from, they usually mean my place of origin, my mother country, and I would answer Korea, knowing that that is the answer they were expecting. When I think about that question, I don’t really know the true answer. I was raised practically my whole life in Elmhurst, Queens but that isn’t the only place where I have gained experiences and my fondest memories. I believe that the definition of home is your experiences and the place where you feel most secure. That can be in the company of loved ones, or the places where you have felt the most hardship but learned from it and became stronger. Home is a massive word yet only four letters. It can be dissected into so many different meanings. Yet, I feel as though the word home is the only appropriate word to describe the experiences I have gone through in the paragraphs above. Those experiences and memories are integrated into me and never would I want to go back and change them. That is what home means to me.

This weekly walk I didn’t have anywhere to go because I am sick. I was so sick that I couldn’t go to school on Tuesday and the only reason I went on Wednesday was because I have a Business exam. So I couldn’t really leave my house, so I just stayed near my neighborhood (actually just one block from my apartment). This is a picture I took around 5:00 pm and the building to the left was my elementary school which is also just one block from my apartment. Around the corner of that white building on the right, there is a new supermarket that not many people know about because it is in a low populated area. But when walking this block, I could hear the sounds of the workers in the supermarket, I couldn’t understand what they were saying because they were speaking in a different tongue (maybe Chinese). Also, it was really warm today, about 66 degrees Fahrenheit, which is so crazy because I still feel like I’m in winter and it was cold a couple of days ago, but that’s just New York weather. I haven’t actually taken this path in a while because the train station is the opposite way and I remembered a little about my time in middle school where I had to walk this path to go the my middle school (which is also only like 4 blocks away from my apartment).

 

In the chapter “The uses of sidewalks: safety” in The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, the author writes about the purpose and important of streets besides carrying pedestrians. Jacobs writes, if someone says that a city “is dangerous or is a jungle, what they mean primarily is that they do not feel safe on the sidewalks.” What I think Jacobs meant by this is that the streets of a city determines how secure pedestrians or civilians in the city feels. Jacobs correlates safe cities with sidewalks that are usually populated. Meaning that more suburb cities, like New York or Los Angeles are more safer than cities that are more rural. The only way to make the streets safer is through the people who live in the cities. They need to be willing to protect each other and grow as a community. I kind of agree with what Jacobs is saying because if the people do not make an effort to make their city better, it will never become safe no matter how many police or cameras they put on the streets.