Showing posts with label A good forest to die in. Show all posts
Showing posts with label A good forest to die in. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

An attempt at somewhat intellegent writing

Today, after entering first period, I was assaulted by a sizeable number of readers of this blog. (Consisting of my two friends Jeremy and JT) Between Ms. Loomis bitching at us and the whole senior class, they explained to me that I would be more productive if I wrote a good half page instead of a long drawn out full page. I decided to meet them in the middle, from now on I will attempt no to have eco apocalypse rants that go on for half a page, or me basically repeating how tired I am for pages and pages. I will write one page a day still but it will be good.
With that said I should get back to the post. I am going to try to avoid in all my posts a long boring drawn out description of my day.
Today when I got the mail (after coming home from being downtown with Christa) I found my membership to the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club, for those of you who don’t know, is a grassroots environmental organization. John Muir, a man who was influential in saving trees by making national parks in the late 1900’s, founded it. John Muir also played an early part in trying to save the redwood trees in the book I am reading right now, A good forest for dying (or something like that).
It had a section about the Sierra Student Coalition, which is basically a student organization. It seems like something that I should look into. It might not be nearly as extreme or effective as a more radical group but I think it could reach more students and serve as a launching board for a more radical student group.
After that I sat down and did a very dedicated session of homework listening to Evan Greer, who I think greatly shocked even my left wing parents. I think partly due to his music they all left the house and almost forgot to take me to Tae Kwon Do. When I got there the class was incredibly easy for the most part until the end when we did pushups. After 99 pushups (15,14 to 6) my arms went all weak and I was barely able to get up. This of course got the notice of my Teacher. He stood over me and counted as I did them and by the end I was to weak to go back up.
I got home and went on YouTube to find out that Trevor was the guest editor. YouTube Home Page He has some incredibly cool videos featured and I would be sure to check them out before they all vanish tomorrow or whenever videos vanish.
While on YouTube I looked up some videos of treesits and found the ones that are talked about in my book (okay, this post did turn into an eco-rant, sorry). There was one disturbing one that showed non-deputized climbers working for Pacific lumber doing what amounts to torture to peaceful, nonviolent protestors.
It is really disturbing to think that in a country where freedom of speech and expression is so protected on one would do anything when people are being put through this. I think it shows that Americans really aren’t equal or, like George Orwell would say, some are more equal than others. I think Americans think what human rights do a dirty, pot smoking, tree hugging hippie need. What they don’t remember is that revolutionaries founded our country. They love to say that the founding fathers would believe in this or that. But one thing they did do is fight for a cause.
This means that even if we disagree with a cause we should at least be civil and peaceful while removing people who are peaceful in return.
Goodnight and good luck-
Sam

Friday, May 18, 2007

A typical friday

Today im not feeling as militantly environmental but I will try to keep the militant feeling around. My day went by in a haze like all Fridays. I was inviting my friends to a “social gathering of responsible peers and Trevor in celebration of the 15th anniversary of my birth” for tomorrow but I worry that I invited to many people (like 15 off the top of my head and that is relying on the fact that no one invites anyone else). I can kind of imagine a bunch of cars showing up tomorrow and ending up having everyone in Ithaca and the surrounding area arrive. The book a good forest to die in was initially really exciting but as far as I can tell it became slightly overly historical and explaining the situations leading up to the Protestor getting killed (although there isn’t anything wrong with this). Right now im kind of pissed off at my mom (a regular occurrence) because when I told her that I invited a bunch of people she flipped out and immediately asked me if I had invited a certain kid. This kid in question I didn’t invite but he is a nice kid even if he walks the line in regards to the law and is always getting in trouble for drugs. I think she is a massive hypocrite because when she was younger she obviously did drugs and unless I am very much mistaken inviting her to a party wouldn’t have been the worst thing that could happen. My English teacher was really annoying today. He has very good intentions and does cool stuff with us (like take us to the falls or invite Rising tide to come visit our class) but he still manages to do some really annoying things. Today he started the class reading from this book about Cambodian history because we are about to read a book about the Cambodian genocide. In it the book defiantly said something along the lines of “Cambodia is so fucked up because westerners can’t see the difference between Cambodia and other countries”. But near the end of the class my teacher mentioned how a character in the book showed the Confucian value of filial piety. To me this seemed like comparing Celtic ideas to Christianity because they are both in the same relative area. If you have read this far you get a gold star. Also if you have read this far you may be wondering why I have no form at all of formatting. This is because I have completely given up on trying to format my ramblings. I am hoping that my writing will improve just by me writing a page a day.
My dad has is kindof amusing today. He has bought me the Gimme! Barista guide for my birthday (or something from gimme!) and has been really sneaky about it. This would have worked except I heard the people at gimme talking about and he got it from them infront of me.
Just as I have been writing I have been hit by a wave of tiredness. I point this on “coming down” from my mini caffeine buzz from the mocha loving supreme I got at gimme today. I think I spend about 30 dollars there a week and its kindof depressing when I think about it.
This morning I meet Christa before school at College town bagels and then we walked to school, which was very nice. There is this one guy at CTB who seems really talkative and always jokes with me. I cant decide whether it is creepy or nice.
My mom is insisting that I get a job this summer. This bothers me because I would like to do something but I would like it to be meaningful. In the perfect world I would have a hippie socialist social action protest group I could join and work with this summer but unfortunately we don’t have that even in Ithaca (actually it wouldn’t be a perfect world if there were groups trying to solve problems). This summer I will probably just end up playing wow and hanging out with friends but im sure that it will beat school. Goodbye until tomorrow.