JB’s Blog

Volunteering is something that everyone should do. Just think how much better the world would be if people just took a little time out of their day to help someone out. Volunteering is something that I am trying to get invovled with in many different ways. I have been volunteering for http://www.foodforlanecounty.org/News/index.htmlfor about a year now and am looking for many other ways to help around my community. In school, I am also doing a project in peer group called Community 101. In community 101, we (the students) are granted 5000 dollars from PGE And Oregon Board of Education to give to local non profit organizations. Our first step in deciding were the money goes is to a main problem in our community. This year we choose homelessness and foster care as our to main problems. After that step each person is broken into a commitee and assigned jobs. the commitees this year were executive (which is the leaders), Public Relations (they spread the word), Event planning (this group plans the end of the year assembly), and fundraising (this group raises money). Through all these groups we learned major business and volunteering tools. At the end of the process we raise an extra 1000 dollars for our school and give the 5000 to the other non profits of our choice.

       Volunteering is one of the greatest things to do. It really opens up your eyes sometimes, and shows you how lucky you really are. It also teaches you many life skills. If I could say one thing in this post it would be ” That everyone needs to volunteer.

On my blog the ten posts.

     To me heroes are not just people who are in wars or people who are famous. It is people who are just there for you all the time. A hero is a person you know will always help you through hard times, and be that person you need to talk to. My opinion is that everyone is a hero in the eyes of someone else. We are all a hero in our  way. To me all that talk about being born a hero is not true. You become a hero to someone who looks up to you.

     One of my heroes has to be my grandma. She showed me how life can be hard but you always have to preserver through hardships. She is the strongest lady I have ever meant in my life.

     My grandma grew up really poor, and when she grew old enough to move out she did. When she moved out she started to work as a waiter. While working one day she saw a man and went to talk to him. This man happened to be my grandpa. They both hit it off and ended up getting married. Through the marriage she had 4 boys, but after the fourth boy my grandma and grandpa split up. This was hard on my grandma because she had to raise three of the four younger kids by herself. To do this off one wage was extremely diffucult, but she always found a way to provide for the her three kids. The kids also stole money and items from ,but somehow she always showed she was in charge. As years pasted my grandma got old and watched as her children have children of there own. My grandma was always there as far back as I remember. She always said she was there for her grandchildren.

       This all led to this year. My grandma was a smoker when she was young and it caught up to her. About 4 months ago she went to the hospital. The nurse said she probably wasn’t going to make it. Somehow though she pulled through and got  better. When she was better, she told my dad that whatever happens she doesn’t want to be on life support. Then about another month past, and she started to get sick again. The doctor told us she had about a week. So we took my grandma to our house for her last week. For that week my grandma really showed how much of a hero she was to me. She fought so hard even without medication. She ended up living a week extra.

Through that two weeks I saw that fight my grandma always had. She showed me how much she loved us and how much life really meant to her. To me she showed what a hero really is. A hero is the person you can look up to the most. She was definitely that to me.

 This was inspired by Bringing us Together

     If I could see a animal in the wild I would totally see a lion. The lion is so fascinating. The way they eat and hunt is extrodinary. They are also the king of the jungle and who would want to study the king of the jungle? I learned some interesting facts about lions on the discovery channel, and I would definitely love to learn more about them. To all the animal lovers reading my blog you should click on my links and watch my movies on lions.

1.http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/lion-feeding-frenzy-fishing-for-lions.html

2.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH8GXPOyKS4&feature=PlayList&p=ECFD8097768D702D&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=2

3.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rlZVtKKWnk

After the poll I would like you to tell me why you like that color? I also would like to know what’s your favorite thing is that is this color?

To me my favorite color is blue. I like blue because it is all over the world. I also like blue because I love the ocean and all the things in it. The ocean is a mystery waiting to be discovered that is why I love it.

Got all pics off verizon network.

Earth day to me is not a huge deal. I agree with Anna that all things decay at some point, and there is nothing we can do about it. I’m not saying that recycling and keeping our world clean is a bad thing at all. I just think there is a point where we can not change the path the world is taking. I heard a fact on the discover channel once that when a volcano erupts it pollutes a equivalent of thirty years the United States pollutes. To me the world can destroy it’s self and restore its self. Where just trying to prolong it. Even know I dont think Earth Day is a huge deal .We should all do it so we can make our environment a better place for generations to come.

jbs Booktalk podcast

In this blog I am going to talk about some issues in our economy and ask some questions to the readers of my blog. I encourage you to write a comment back, answering some of my question.

Everyone knows that our economy is not in good shape. For me im not really thinking how bad it is. I am thinking about how we got here, and how we can learn for that info for future references.

Here is a question I ask you guys. How do you think our economy got to this recession? For me I think it is all our fault for being lazy. Here are some examples of why I think were lazy. 1. Instead of not finding other sources of energy we counted on oil from foreign countries who hate and can hurt us with raising the prices. 2. Our government doesn’t put education as a high priority, so we don’t get people to do all the highly inteligent jobs. Then we have to import all these other people from different places and pay them money to do the jobs. Which in turn doesn’t make jobs for americans, so americans dont spend money. 3.  We rely so much on foriegn policies that the end up killing us when our dollar gets weak. 4. Our government doesn’t budget there money at all they have no cap and just keep spending money. 5. All of the stock market and housing market invested in all these stupid loans which in turn people couldn’t pay back. So the company crashed and all the companys around and connected to them started to fall. So our federal reserve had to bail them out. Those are my inputs what is yours.

My next question is how do you think we can change the economy now? For me I think we need to watch the big bisnesses and see what there spending all there money on. I also think the government needs to find new energy sources, so we dont have to rely on foriegn countries.The next thing we need to do is get our own oil. The most important thing we need to do is stay more focused on education.

My last question is if you could tell obama one thing to do about the economy’s recession what would it be? Mine would be stay away from socialism as much as possible.

For the Blog Post #5 – Podcasting: A Literary Connection I choose the podcast Maus by Art Spiegelman. Out of all the podcasts I listened to, this one stood out the most to me because of the way the speaker voice is very fluent and easy to understand. She uses her voice to trap you into the story, and makes you wants you to read the story.

The makers of this podcast used a lot of different techniques to make the listener want to read the book. One of the techniques i liked was the way they used their there background music. They used the background music at the right times in the podcast, and It made the listener pay more attention. It also made the story ten times more interesting to me because it wasn’t some boring person just speaking about the story the whole time. Another thing that was great and intriguing to me was the way they used the sound affects. They blended it in with the music which I have never heard in a podcast before. It was very interesting, and I might use that in my podcast. I think they used a great part of the story  first to pull you in then talked more about it after you were alredy intrigued by it. I think this is a impressive way to do a podcast on there part. The last thing I liked about this podcast was the introducting music. Again it pulls you in to the story, and wants you to listen to the podcast.

Here is where you can find the podcast. http://odeo.com/episodes/17438943-Maus-by-Art-Spiegelman