Otherness

Hey folks,
So... I'm going to tell you ladies and gentlemen about an article I read about a baby born during the Iraqi war. This little girl was and is known as Iraq's miracle baby. She was born with a spinal tumor and one night when the American Soldiers went through homes to ask families questions, this young girls brave grandmother showed her to them. This now young girl is named Noor. After she was shown to the soilders, they went back to camp to see if there wasn't something that could be done for her. That day, God must have been looking out for this family because after talking with people from the camp hospital, Noor was able to go to America and have surgery to remove the tumor. Although the tumor has paralyzed her and she is left with Spina Bifida, she is a survivor.
On a side note, I don't know how she went from living in America to living in Iraq. One struggle she faces is being treated differently because of her disability. She has to take a bus a long way only because there are two schools in all of Iraq that will have children with disabilities. This country is still not used to differences in people and although America is further along, are we really that different? After the news spread that the great and mighty America had given this little girl a second chance at life, it eventually died out and praise stopped coming, and with this so did the support America was giving Noor. A few years later after her surgery, the doctors stopped calling to ask how she was and lost touch. They also stopped sending her cathiders so now she is forced to use them multiple times and suffers from urinary tract infections. Were the American people only there for Noor because they knew they would receive praise from the Iraqi people?
After reading this article, I was first off really mad that the American's would take on a responsibility and then just stop. They should be trying to advocate for children with disabilities and help build schools for these children who deserve an education.
I actually wanted to talk about this article because it relates a lot to Notre Dame de Paris or otherwise known as the hunchback of Notre Dame. This book has a main theme of otherness and how being different was viewed. One of the main characters is a hunchback named Quasimodo... when imagining him, don't think of the slightly handsome hunchback from the Disney movie. This man is grotesque in every way imaginable. He has one eye and he's deaf and has a large nasty boil above his one eye. Anyway back to my point, people don't accept otherness as much as one would hope. Like Noor, when Quasimodo was a baby his mother didn't want him because he was different and he was given up. Luckly for Noor, her grandparents were willing to take her in. For Quasimodo, he was stared at and called a demon and everyone wanted to burn him except one person who was an archdeacon.
For both Noor and Quasimodo life in the place where they live has been hard. I haven't gotten to the end of the book, but I hope it gets better for Quasimodo and I especially hope things get better for Noor who is no fictional character.

Knowing

Hey there!

I’m back with another close reading of a poem from the Tao Te Ching. This was a quiz that we had in class and I feel that I was finally able to properly explain this poem after all the practice I had done.

Since I have done one of these poems before, and I told you about the Taoist principles, you already have a little background knowledge about it. The poem I am going to talk about is called Knowing and here it is so you can follow along..

47. Knowing

Without taking a step outdoors
You know the whole world;
Without taking a peep out the window
You know the colour of the sky.

The more you experience,
The less you know.
The sage wanders without knowing,
Sees without looking,
Accomplishes without acting.http://www.chinapage.com/gnl.html

When reading this poem I find that there is still the theme of nature like knowing the world and the color of the sky. I think the first section means we can know what to expect from the world without interacting with it. But then the second piece says you know less when you do experience more this could be a balance between knowing and not knowing. BY experiencing life and the world, you may come to realize that you knew less than you thought you did because there is so much to experience. In the last three lines about the sage, I think they’re saying that the sage just does things without trying to be prepared. Without this preparedness he sees thing he didn’t expect and he has also accomplished things without trying to. I think maybe by saying he has accomplished without acting, they are saying he has found the Way. The Way is free flowing and from what we have learned is not really something you can look for and just find. The sage doesn’t look for things, he simply wanders and by doing this maybe he has found the Way.

I have come to appreciate these poems more now that I am able to find the deeper meanings. You too should work on analyzing poems; it’s easier than it looks!

Well…Until next time!

Stay Classy!

Hello again!
So... for the past couple of weeks we have been reading A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. I can't say I immediately fell in love with the book, and I wouldn't be telling the truth if I said I even like the book now that it's over. HOWEVER, I do think there are important themes that can be pulled out of the story and  I did enjoy Dickens' voice and tone throughout the story.
One part in particular that I liked was towards the end in the chapter titled Calm in Storm. Dickens is describing the "Le Guillotine" (a devise used to cut people's heads off)  and uses sarcasm to let the audience see how he feels about it, but also letting his readers know how the French viewed "Le Guillotine". He says things like, it cured headaches and gray hair and it gave the closet shave any razor could. When he is saying this, I sense his sarcasm and even disgust at the people who look at the Guillotine as a nonchalant way to kill people.  I can understand that he thinks it is barbaric that people would go watch others be beheaded and not flinch when the blood went flying.