Past

I have had a good year and it is amazing how fast it seems to have gone. It seems that it was last year when I had my phycology and ocean/meteorology classes when it was just last semester. I have had my share of struggles in both Econ and ocean/meteorology while the rest of my classes went fairly smoothly. The times I had the most fun of the year were when I was at OASC Man Nights and at Show Choir competitions, which at one of these competitions we became grand champions the first time in four years.

Future

During this summer I will be getting a job I have not decided where but I will get one. The next school year I will be attending UWEC. For the first year I will be doing my generals and attending choir. After that I plan to do something in engineering I have not decided what type I will do yet.

Presesnt

Project/Graduation. I found that this project was nice in that there was a clear definition on the project parrameters. The only flaw I can think of is that for the teacher to grade the assignment you have to show her in class which takes time from the current assignment that you are working on. As for graduation I find it donting to think that in just three months I will esenshally be on my own, making my own disitions not having anyone to help motivate me to do homework or to get up in the morning. It is because of this that even though I only have two days left that graduation still seems so far away.

Fiction / Dystopia

In my class we watched a film called "The Road". This film takes place in a post-apocalyptic world some years after a major unexplained cataclysm has destroyed civilization and most life on Earth. The land is filled with ash and devoid of living animals and vegetation. The connection with food is since there is a sever lack of things to eat many people have resorted to cannibalism in order to stay alive. It is a test to how far someone is willing to go to severe. We also watch an episode from the history channel about the Salem witch trials. In this episode they describe a theory that the muscle spasms and illusions that the women of that time saw were due to tainted food. One thought is that ergot, a fungus that thrives in moist warm conditions, was the cause of the outbreak. Ergot causes muscle spasms, delusions, seizures, and contortions all the symptoms of the original victims (for of course there are some who lie about it because they are jealous). Once the rain that had plugged them with this fungus stopped and the crops were dried the accusations took a major drop and so the trials stopped.

Food

In the video Food Revolution Jamie Oliver goes to L.A. in the hopes he can get a look at what their schools are feeding their kids. By seeing what the schools put into their lunches he hopes to inspire a better menu. He faces many obstacles while trying to obtain entrance into the public schools or even access to their central office kitchens. In order to get around this he opens his kitchen to parents to show the lack of nutritional value in the public school food, he has sugar poured into a bus to illustrate the amount of sugar ingested by students through chocolate milk, and he hands out cold lunches to students who would otherwise select cafeteria food. Through small suggestions and changes, Oliver hopes to make a big impact in the way public schools feed children. Since I myself am a student, I find it disturbing how unhealthy some of the stuff is. We learn what eat by example and if we are feed unhealthy foods then we learn to eat unhealthy foods.

Non- fiction

For this post I am relating the subject of food to hearing using the facts found in the book Natural History of the Senses by: Diane Ackerman. The whole of the book describes how much our different senses affect our lives and perceptions of the out side world. In the chapter I read there was a lot of interesting things in it about how being able to hear the sounds around us affects us in a very profound way. An example is that the first sound we ever hear is that of our mother's heart beat and because of this when we hear a steady strong yet gentle beat it calms us down. This relates to food because we have associated a lot of our foods by the way they sound an example is when I hear meat sizzling on a frying pan I immediately think of bacon and my mouth starts to water even without smelling it or tasting it. From just that sound I can taste the grease goodness of the bacon. There are several other foods we most strongly associate with their sound, like Rice Krispies I mean who hasn't head the “Snap, Crackle, Pop!” of Rice Krispies. Then there is the satisfying crack of a Kit-Kat Bar. There are so many sounds that are in our food that make them more appealing. Do you think that a cracker would be the same if if wasn't crunchy Because I don't think it would be. The is something esthetic to the sound of food.

Self Reflection

I picked the topic of books because I am an avid read and I hate it when I see people with very little appreciation in reading for pleasure, of the places that books can take you that nothing else can. T.V. and video games are fine, but they don’t have that same personal feel that takes reading far and beyond that of other stimuli. When I read I can almost access the same intensity of the world that is being created as you might have in a very good dream. Have you ever had a time where you didn’t want to wake up, not because you were tiered, but because you we having a particularly good dream. That is how I feel when I am in a good part of a book. I love it when I get so into a book that I feel like I know characters. I especially like the characters with a quick wit that are always cracking jokes in deadly situations and what makes it even better is if it is placed in our world and the quips and witty lines are about things I know, like when they tell the big bad guy in the dark cloak that he looks like Empire Palatine from Star Wars, it gives me a sense of familiarity that just makes me happy. So what I hope to learn is how I can convey these emotions and experiences to others so that they can get just as much enjoyment out of reading as I do.