What I thought for the for the 12 times

This has been a cool experience. Blogging has been fun. Even though I haven’t done all of my blogs when I was supposed to I like reading what people had to say and think. I also like the fact that this whole class was paperless; it gave a whole new spin on things. I liked the whole paperless thing I told all my teachers.
Writing the blogs was painless, it was just the fact that we had to hit the word limit of 250. I know some of my peers wrote waaayyy more then 250 words but sometimes I just couldn’t. This made it difficult cause I felt like I could just explain myself in a few words but since I had to hit a word limit (teacher skip this part) sometimes I bullshited.
Again I liked reading what people had to say and writing what I felt. Sometimes the deadlines could have been a little later like Sunday night. I don’t know about the rest of you, but for me it was really hard to meet the deadline. I felt rushed at some points especially when we had to go out read other things and websites and write about them. I work and when I come home for like a 12-13 hour day I don’t feel like writing a blog I need to sleep. This was probably my biggest issue was the deadline. I’m thinking that the rest of you probably had problems to, because when I did write it seems like no one else did.
My second thing that I liked about this was the responding. That was fun cool and different. Usually when you write something for class the only person listening is the teacher. Now you have the whole class reading. I liked know that someone was reading my stuff but also I felt like there was a little peer pressure. Like if I didn’t write something and people came to comment they would find nothing there.
Having these blogs has been cool. It’s been fun. This whole class has been a weird (in a good way) experience. It has thrown me off and it felt like the teacher was trusting us to get our paper in on our own.
I think that I might continue to blog. Like one blog a month. I do like getting my word out to the worlds even if know one is listening.

easy/hard: things i should do

Really easy for me to do

Trash Bags
Seeing as I already reuse them. My family uses them as trash bags or to carry lunch in or for any thing you can think of. I feel like yes I don’t take the plastic bags sometimes when they are offered but sometimes I do because we store them for rainy days.

Brushing My teeth
I can do this because I already do : ). I am so fanatic about this that sometimes I run up on my family and close the water as they brush their teeth. They get annoyed and slam it back on with more water rushing out then before.

Transportation
I take public transportation or I walk. This is probably the hardest of the easiest since as we all know public transportation in New York is not the most reliable thing in the world. Walking I find fun when I have the time. I get to think and clear my mind.


Copier
I can try and reduce the energy by using standby. Just have to get the other workers to do it to.

Printers
AT my job we already print on the other side or double print things. Especially if we printed out 16 pages of nothing we just put it back on the blank side and no problemo.

Things that are really hard to do

Composting
I would love to do composting but it would be hard since I live in an apartment and would have no where to put the dirt plus composting as I understand it smellsand that wouldn’t work in a small apartment.

Toilet
This might be the hardest of the hard because as fanatic as I am about shutting off water my parents are about flushing the toilet. I mean it is pee the number two is getting flush sorry world its not staying in my toilet. But yea my parents won’t allow the yellow to mellow. (sorry f you didn’t get that last bit, there is a saying that goes: If it’s brown flush it down if it’s yellow let it mellow or something like that)

Light Bulbs
My daddy buys those and yes one time I did get him to buy florescent light bulbs once the expensive kind and they popped after about three weeks (so much for them lasting longer). So it’s kind of hard to convince them to buy differently.

Sorry but most of the things I can’t do because I live in an apartment and who has dishwasher or a dryer and washer machine, not me. And as for my air conditioner my mom won’t dare turn it on because of the high bill we get so I’m stuck in the heat.

One thing that I will commit to doing right here right now is maybe the compost it would be fun and interesting to try out and start my own little garden. So peace out folks hope you liked : )

...And this is what I thought

The paper I was assigned to read was well written but a little confusing. I did get the main idea of the paper, which was “This paper aims to report the social and environmental significance of the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest.” I feel like maybe the thesis should have come sooner. I felt like for the first few paragraphs what is this, why is this, what is he getting at. The writing was really good though it was just that it wasn’t connected to anything. There were few spelling mistakes.
The paper was interesting, and I really like the points that were brought up the part that I liked the most was “When Christopher Columbus discovered American, it was not only the reveal of unseen sites, it was the encounter of two worlds with different world views”. I think you have a nice way of wording things.If you try to connect the topic with whoever your aiming this at it will be good.

Half-Assed

Okay, It’s May and I’m sure you have all seen the ads up on the subway. It’s bike month oh glorious bike month. What does this mean…absolutely nothing for me, I never had a bike in the first place. Then I started thinking I should get one it would be healthy good for the environment, then I started thinking more. These are some mean streets and drivers in NYC don’t play I really don’t want to get run over you know? Then I thought some more, they do have those bike lanes but it’s like in three places all over the city.
What I’m getting at is the city is so funny, sooo hypocritical they want to promote “bike month” yet do nothing to improve the horrible conditions. They are trying to get rid of petty cabs and they don’t paint more bike lanes and yea there are some electric buses but why are they not all electric.
The city tries so hard, so hard to do there part. Have you noticed the new recycling system? Put everything into one can and we’ll sort it out later. I don’t know what to think. Do they do this because they feel we are not smart enough to figure out how to sort out garbage, or maybe they don’t trust us to sort everything out, shoot I know I don’t.
Our loverly mayor is trying his best to go green (I wish that congesting pricing passed) he really is but is it enough? He put up posters for us to recycle paper, yet there are no paper recycling cans. What’s up with that?
I just wanted to point out the…I don’t know wrongness of the city’s politicsthey want us to do one thing (go green!) but promotes something else(global warming : (}
Maybe it’s just up to us to make the real changes and not wait for the damn city to wake up and get real and not do things half assed.

My work in progress

The topic that I am choosing is environmental racism in the south Bronx, more specifically Hunts Point. This has been going on for years and I will be talking about one of the main effects asthma. Most of the people affected will be people of color and of low income.

The reason I’m writing about this topic is because on of the reasons people are so irresponsible is because they don’t see it. They don’t see the effects of their daily activities. Even the people in these neighborhoods don’t realize what is causing the high asthma rates. It is unfair that about 10% of NYC’s population cares for 40% of its garbage. The main reason to write about this topic is because most people don’t think about racism in an environmental sense. When I first found out I thought “oh please” not really knowing or caring. I want people to see especially the people that it effects that this is important it does deserve attention. It affects people all over the world but since we are in New York we should start here.

The audience I hope to reach is people in low income neighborhood and/or the people that this affects. They should feel shocked and appalled and want to take action. I also want this to reach people that create the mass garbage and maybe they will take action to change their behavior because I doubt that anyone will want to take on their amount of garbage or will volunteer to do so when it causes such bad health effects.

The sources that I will use are mainly people that I have interviewed that are taking action to change the way we do things, people from young teens to the elderly that are taking action in their community. Also an expert that deals in waste management and I want to get someone from the city that can help explain the reasons or just get the cities point of view. I also want to use interviews from real people in these neighborhoods to see how it affects them and to get a real story from the mock interview.

My working thesis is something like: The high number of waste facilities and transfer trucks in the south Bronx is causing some of the highest rates of asthma in the country, very little park land and contaminated water and it needs to change. Not sure if this is a good thesis or thesis statement but that’s what rough grafts are for. Coolio

My Topic2

Umm Yea things I'm going to use is interviews tht I have done with people trying to change whats going on in the south bronx and people that work in the city for the recycling department.

My Topic

My topic is going to be on environmental justice and specificlly in the south bronx. I want to expolore why all the burdon is put on poor communities to take care of trash.