Literature Group Reflection

What worked?
I don't think that much worked in our literature group, some of us could keep up with the writing while others could not. Only Evan, Will and I managed to keep up with the due dates and we were the only ones able to finish the book. When it came to the lit meetings a lot of people didn't have their projects or they just didn't exude any kind of emotion towards their project, most of the time we only did half of the projects or we didn't have enough time for everyone's project. I don't think a lot worked in our lit group.


What would you like to see changed?
I would like to see everyone's project done and I would like to see everyone be able to finish their book so that we could all talk about it and so that we are all able to play everyone's games. Because not a lot of people had finished the part they were supposed to read we were not able to play the games correctly. I would like to see everyone be excited about their projects and not do their projects that morning.

What was your book about?
My book was about the adventures of Huck Finn. Huck lived with a widow that tried to civilize him but he didn't like that so he decided to go with his father who wasn't very nice. He then decided to leave his father and made it look like he had been murdered. He ended up on a little island and soon found Jim, the widow's slave, he had run away because he overheard the widow talking about selling Jim. Jim and Huck soon became friends and decided to head towards New Orleans. They went through a lot of people and Jim ended up getting captured for a reward. Huck ended up going to Aunt Sally's house which was Tom Sawyers Aunt. Tom Sawyer ended up showing up and saying that he was his brother and saying that Huck was Tom. They tried getting Jim out of the back but they all did was plan. They were chased by a crowd of people and they got Jim out because they were running to the raft. Tom ended up getting shot and they let Jim go because Tom told them that he was already a free slave because the widow had died a couple of weeks before and her will said that when she died Jim was free. Jim also told Huck that they saw his dead dad.

Obama Socialist?

When I googled Obama socialism I started looking for a story about what people thought about Obama and socialism. I read on stjoenews.com that an Alabama congressman said that he knew at least 17 socialist house members, but he refused to give the list of the names. Long however says that there is not even one socialist house members and that if there were, everyone would own a piece of AIG or the auto industry, but they don't. The government is helping out the economy now because of the "hard economic times". I don't think that these allegations are correct because Obama made a stimulus plan to help the people and businesses that need help. Any other president would have done the same thing. Bush had a stimulus plan just a year ago and he was not called a socialist. Obama's slogan was Change and it was Hope but that does not mean the hope or the change to socialism.
"Tea Baggers" are insane! I read a blog about the Tea Bagging march in San Diego and there were a lot of interesting quotes on the page, they say "That's not the fist time the liberals in the media have chosen to ignore and demean you." They claim that all media is controlled by "liberal extremist" and a lot believe that Obama is a socialist. They all agree that Obama's taxes are too high and that they think it needs to stop.
Obama is not the first president to be called a socialist however, plenty of other presidents have been called a socialist. When I googled Socialist presidents in America, I saw a lot about the GOP calling Obama a socialist. They say that his economic plan is going to lead to a large deficit that will last until 2013 and will not start to go up until after that. Everyone seems to be calling Obama a socialist because of his stimulus plan but it seems that they do not take into account Bush's stimulus plan which was proposed just a year and a half ago, remember, point a finger, you have three going back to you.

Citations:
Thomas, Clinton. "stjoenews.net | Obama the socialist, some say." stjoenews.net | St. Joseph News-Press | St. Joseph news, sports, entertainment, business, jobs, cars, yellow pages & classifieds. Serving St. Joseph, MO . http://www.stjoenews.net/news/2009/apr/19/obama-socialist-some-say/ (accessed April 21, 2009).

"Tea Party Success! - San Diego, California Talk Radio Station - 760 KFMB AM - 760kfmb." San Diego, California Talk Radio Station - 760 KFMB AM - 760kfmb - HOME. http://www.760kfmb.com/Global/story.asp?S=10195736 (accessed April 21, 2009).

Honors Blog

1. Huck Finn is about 13 years old, t he doesn't have an excellent posture. Jim is a big man that was almost traded for being so big ahe is quite thin because he doesn't eat a lot and he's always running around. He's about the average size of an 13 year old, he's not too tall but he's not short. I'm not quite sure about Huck's posture but I'm sure that he's strong. He's really big and he usually sits around on the raft because he can't go out during the day time, they only travel at night because they don't want to get caught. The duke and the king are different, the king is an old skinny man while the duke is a younger man, they're isn't a lot said about what they look like except the king is an older man.
2. Huck has dark short hair, I believe he has brown eyes and he has no prominent scars. Jim is a big black man that doesn't have too many prominent features, he has black hair, he's big, black and strong. The duke and the king are small and manipulative. They appear a more respectable type, but the truth is that they are manipulative men that don't care about what other people have to go through as long as they get money out of it. They are the quintessential
3. Huck Finn has an old timer way of dressing, he wears the long white shirts and he wears the pants with the suspenders, he only wears that when he's in town, when Huck is on the raft with Jim he doesn't wear any clothes, both Jim and Huck believe there is no reason to wear clothes. I don't remember them ever talking about Huck's shoes, but I'm sure that they weren't the nicest. Huck wears a hat and he always carries around a pipe because he's always smoked. Jim also wears old clothes that isn't always the cleanest, he wears the long shirts and every time I see a picture of him drawn he has overalls on. He doesn't necessarily care about what he looks like and he is usually naked when Huck and him are on the raft, while they're on the raft they are both naked because they both feel as if though they are more comfortable like that, if they fall into the river, they don't take as long to dry because they are naked. Like Huck, Jim usually has a pipe on him and I believe that he as well has a hat. The Duke and the King are usually dressed because they don't feel as comfortable around each other as Jim and Huck do. The king and the duke usually try to dress better when they are in town to make a good impression, they try to con people so they have to dress a certain way, they have to look respectable. When the duke and the king are on the raft they dress more casually because they don't have to impress anyone.
4. What distinguishing behavior does the character have? Include habits, preferences (music, food, literature, etc.), speech (sayings, stalling words, etc), and demeanor.
In the beginning of the book the widow tries to turn Huck into a responsible citizen, however Huck runs away with his father and soon runs away from his father as well. Huck is responsible for himself and for that reason he never tried to learn anything new. Huck did not have the best vocabulary and he wasn't the most articulate but he was more articulate than Jim. Huck also didn't have the best manners, he always spent his time going out and didn't really have time to go to school. Jim never went to school, he had no education and it wasn't necessarily needed for him. Jim was the widows slave so he didn't really need to know anything except how to work and what to do around the house, he was more street smart, he knew what to do and he usually had really good ideas. He was a very compassionate man, he always took care of Huck as if he were his child and he missed his own children very much, both his wife and his children were seperated and that made Jim quite depressed some of the time, sometimes Huck would find Jim crying in the middle of the night. The duke and the king said that they were really into important things such as saying that they were into plays like Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, they said that they were into Shakespeare's plays because they wanted to put a more sophisticated front up. They wanted to seem more educated and impressive because they were supposed to be a duke and a king.
5. Huck Finn was "the lowest levels of white society", since he didn't have a set home and he didn't have an education, he wasn’t thought of highly at all. He had an abusive drunk father who was never around and he didn’t care about being civil or people respecting him. Huck liked smoking out of his pipe and he liked going around in his raft, it seemed as if though he also liked dressing like a woman, maybe not liked it, but he seemed to do it quite often. He knew how to steer a raft pretty well and he didn’t seem to mind being on his own, he was also really good at lying. Jim was a respectable man and he had a lot of good ideas, he had ideas of looking sick and not letting anyone get close to him because he was a runaway slave. Jim didn’t really know anything but being a slave until he left and he joined Huck on his trip. Jim was very superstitious, he believed in snakes being bad luck and he had a lucky hairball. Overall, Jim was sometimes gullible but he always had Huck’s best intentions at heart. The duke and the king however, did not have good intentions for anyone but themselves. They did not think of anyone as a person, they thought of them as a part of their scheme. The duke and the king spent the remainder of their lives trying to trick people into giving them money. They tried getting money from unsuspecting town people, from the Wilks sisters and from more town people, until they were discovered. They were mere con-artists.

6. Huck didn’t really have a religion or philosophy; he was a unique boy because although he was white and had a social life with the white people around him, he did not believe in turning in his good friend Jim. At that time it was not acceptable for him to not turn in Jim because he was a runaway slave, because of that, it’s easy to believe that Huck thought for himself and sometimes disagreed with the morals that were around during that time. Jim was very superstitious, he believed that if you touched a snake skin it was extremely bad luck and something really bad would happen, when he was a slave he believed that he had a hairball that would bring good luck or could tell the future if you would roll it, people from all around would come to see the “good luck hair ball”. Because Jim was so gullible and wasn’t as capable in believing in his ideas, when Tom Sawyer came around, he went along with all his crazy ideas that took him a long time to get out of the hut he was stuck in. The duke and the king had no moral standards at all, and for that reason they were always tricking people and making a fool out of themselves. At the Wilks house they almost got hung because they were lying about being Peter’s brothers and taking all of the money. The duke and the king had no moral standards and because of that they didn’t get far with their trickery.
7.The book says that Huck is a boy that doesn’t want to be “sivilized”, he’s comfortable with the way he is and how he’s lived his life. Huck doesn’t want to go to school and he’s gullible. He enjoys the company of his best friend Tom Sawyer, which isn’t always a good thing. The book says that Jim is quite gullible and that he doesn’t do the best job at thinking for himself. Jim really tries to be the best person he can be, whenever he sees Huck he always treats him compassionately and he calls him “honey” and gushy things like that. Jim always wants the best for people. The book says that Jim is a man that only wants to find his kids and wife and be happy. The book says that the duke and the king are poo-heads that don’t know anything but to scam people into thinking that they’re respectable people that will help them in some way, but in the end they get discovered and they end up getting hung.
8. What connections does this character have to history, established religion or the world beyond the book?
9. What does the character's name suggest? Authors rarely (if ever) name characters at random. What could the name symbolize? What evidence do you have for this?
10. How does the character develop during the plot? How does he/she change?

Immersion Photo Essay

When you see the Tijuana River Valley for the first time, it’s something that you have no words for; there are thousands of plastic bottles and hundreds of pieces of trash. You would never think that so much trash could be located in one riverbed. Most of the trash comes from Tijuana, all of the bottles say “ECOCE” and have labels in Spanish. While I was at WiLDCOAST I realized that there wasn’t a direct remedy to this problem; during my immersion I learned that the only way that this problem could ever be taken care of is if both the United States and Tijuana work together. This problem of pollution is not only affecting the health of people in Tijuana, it’s also affecting San Diegans. The trash will not stay on one side of the border-we both need to do something about the problem in the Tijuana River Valley.



There are more than 2 million tires sent to Mexico every year by California; because tires have more life in them they are used in Mexico for a short time, so they can also use them for their cars or as a building tool for their homes. When the tires are no longer useful to them they throw them away or they are swept to the nearby river (the Tijuana River) which comes back to San Diego. This is an ongoing cycle, California uses tires, they send them to Mexico when they’re done with them, Mexico uses them for their houses or their cars and when they’re done with them, the wheels go back into the Tijuana River. Tijuana doesn’t have the resources to help stop the on-going cycle by themselves - seeing as how their budget is the same as the city of Del Mar. The tires are a big part of this problem, but after the tires, there are the thousands of plastic bottles and trash located in the River Valley.


Imperial Beach is instantly affected by all the pollution found in the Tijuana River Valley; it is a community that has its beach closed 200 days out of the year. If we could find a way to work together with our neighboring country, we could have a solution to this problem. Imperial Beach is close to the border so all of the pollution found across the border could be found in Imperial Beach because it goes through the river and because of the currents, most of the contaminants can be found in Imperial Beach. Since my internship is located in Imperial Beach, I noticed that there aren’t as many people in the water; there were a lot of fisherman however. Since all of the pollutants come across the border, the fisherman could be eating contaminated fish that could be harmful. We need to work with Mexico so that the fish that Imperial Beach community members are eating can be safe and so that Tijuana could have a clean healthy community as well.



The more media the Tijuana River Valley can get, the better. It’s important for people to realize how important it is to get the River Valley cleaned up and usually that means that they need some impressive visuals. During immersion, Telemundo did a segment on the Tijuana River Valley and how the only way to fix this problem was to work together. The cameraman and reporter seemed quite taken aback by the fact that there was so much trash, and that it smelled so bad. Since Telemundo is a Spanish network that plays in both the United States and Mexico: we found it to be the perfect opportunity to tell the story about the Tijuana River Valley and working binationally.




During immersion we had the chance to go to a meeting that had officials from both sides of the border. There was a man that spoke about the recycling program that the officials intend to start in Tijuana soon, there were several people from other organizations that wanted to talk about what they planned to do for the both communities. I learned a lot about the situation in Tijuana and how we had to do a lot of research in order to even think about starting a recycling program in Tijuana. Seeing as how Tijuana has such a low budget, I learned that recycling programs need collecting stations for trash and recycling. Pick-up trucks in Tijuana spend 70% transporting their trash and only 30% actually collecting trash. We need to be able to help Tijuana with their trash problem because at this point, it’s also affecting the U.S.

Internship Immersion 2

The most important thing during my immersion is social welfare and politics. WiLDCOAST is involved with social welfare because they give people free vaccinations to people that are ocean users, they are making doctors experienced in ocean related illnesses, they are working with Imperial Beach Medical Center to recognize ocean symptoms. They do a lot to try and help the health of people by making better programs for them and trying to find a solution from the root of the problem. Since they know that a lot of pollution comes from, such as working in the Tijuana River Valley, they do a lot to try and get it cleaned up, they have clean-ups, they try and find out what kinds of chemicals are sent out from polluted water and they look at where all the trash is coming from. WiLDCOAST is all about social welfare because they do a lot to better the health of the people in the community.

WiLDCOAST is into politics because they try and change legislature so that Mexico and the U.S. can work together to help fix the problem of pollution in both countries. They want to do something so that both countries benefit from the solution to the pollution problem that is in both countries. One of the solutions would be that the United States could work along side Mexico and give them the resources that they need. Tijuana has the same budget that the small city of Del Mar has, Del Mar is about 1/5 the size of Tijuana and has about 1/5 of the people. Tijuana has a constant amount of people coming in ever year and for that reason, Tijuana needs more resources. If we could help Tijuana with their resources, they could have more money to take care of things such as waste control and possibly start a recycling program.

Overall, WiLDCOAST is really dedicated to social welfare and politics. This non-profit organization tries to make the ocean better for everyone that gets into it, they also try to make everything healthier for everyone, if Tijuana has to live with polluted waters, then we will try to get them better living conditions.

Immersion Internship

1. What are you most excited about in regards to your immersion experience? Why do you feel this way?
I'm really excited about finishing my video during immersion and learning more about the place I'm interning at. I'm excited about presenting to the officials during the Tijuana River Valley presentation. I'm also really excited about experiencing what a real job feels like, going everyday and knowing what it feels like to go to work and go home, and be tired. I want to see what people at my internship are like everyday and see how they get used to us being around all the time. I'm also really excited to see what kinds of places we're going to travel to, such as going to the Tijuana River Valley to get footage and going to Tijuana to get footage of some people answering questions.

2. What are you most concerned about (what causes the most stress) regarding immersion? Why do you feel this way?
I'm concerned about getting to internship on time and how long it's going to get there everyday. I also am concerned about what we're going to be doing everyday because we can't make phone calls to important people and we can't do very important things because it relates to the government, other than that I'm not really concerned.

Progressive Era

How progressive was the Progressive Era in American history?

Things to consider (choose some, not all!):

* Constitutional Amendments?

* Workers & Working Conditions?

* Imperialism?

* Civil Liberties?

* Conservation?

* Democracy?

* Freedom?

Make sure that you take a stand and establish a judgement, comparison in relation to a specific standard.