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Review of Blackbear's Song, "Sometimes I Want 2 Die"

by Jenna Dziekiewicz

Simply skimming the lyrics or hearing a sample of the song “Sometimes I Want 2 Die” by Blackbear may give a not so attentive reader or listener a negative first impression. The song may sound like it’s about a junkie looking at his life and wanting to die, but a deeper meaning exists in these words. 

Self-reflective, emotional, and full of intense feeling, this song portrays such a vast amount of the way life works in only two minutes and forty-three seconds.

The first part of the song emphasizes the negative things he left in the past. Blackbear sings “I was fiend for the coke sniffin’ dreams up my nose, but I’m off that now. I was a liar and a thief had opinions and beliefs, but I’m off that now.” A transformation from his old life to his new life takes place. These lines show that after acquiring more experience, he changed for the better and got off drugs and stopped stealing.

Not all of the changes experienced in the song represent a more positive image. For example, “I was a lover and a fiend never worried ‘bout the ends, but I’m off that shit right now. I was in love, I was in lust I was a lover you could trust, but I’m off that shit right now.” This shows him going from trustworthy to not, which could be associated as a negative thing, however, in this instance it is not.

After gaining more knowledge he learns that trusting people does not always work out. Clearly these lines show that he has been hurt in the past.    

Admitting that he at one time was blinded, Blackbear talks about how he finally can see the different things in his life. He writes, “I was a slave to the lean couldn’t feel, couldn’t see, but I’m off that shit right now.” After finally sobering up and getting clean, he now experiences the emotions and feelings he could not feel previously. These emotions cloud every part of him, and overtake all of his senses.      

All of this stress and realness of life become too much to handle at many points. In order to deal with this, Blackbear writes, “Sometimes I want to die. I don’t care if it’s sad, I want to die. Take all my money out the ATM and start a little bonfire. Let it burn, let it burn, let it burn all night.” Now that he sees the world for what it really is instead of hiding behind the drugs, he does not know how to deal with it. All of the knowledge and emotions are too much to handle. All he wants to do is die and burn all of his money, which now does not correlate with his happiness. This matters because after finally taking a step back and reflecting on his life, he feels as if this life is not the one he wants.

The ending of the song implies that even if he kills himself he will not be able to escape life. He notes, “And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Let it burn, let it burn, let it burn, let it burn all night. And if I die before I wake up, I pray to God there’s whiskey and a chaser.” If he does kill himself, he prays that there will be whiskey and a chaser because he will still be the same person just in death. Obviously, Blackbear sees no way out of his struggles.

Overall, this song emphasizes the fact that life should be beautiful and people should be trustworthy, but that this is not true at all. This song highlights that we cannot escape who we are, but instead have to learn to accept ourselves and deal with it in the best way possible. Life is full of pain, suffering, and addiction, and even in the end, Blackbear admits that we can still not escape the struggles of life.

Works Cited

“​Blackbear – Sometimes I Want 2 Die.” Genius, 4 Aug. 2016, genius.com/Blackbear-sometimes-i-want-2-die-lyrics.

Still in Love with This Harvest Moon (64)

By Shannon Buford

Harvest Moon 64 for the Nintendo 64 was my first console game, and I was about seven years old when I first played it at a friend’s house. I felt skeptical about the premise. My friend described it as “a game where you farmed, explored the land, got married, had a kid, and attended festivals.” It sounded unbelievably stupid to me. Though this was my first console game, I knew from my experience with PC games that they were supposed to be involve killing Nazis or racing go-karts, not simulating agriculture or—children shudder at the banality—life.

But like so many console cultivation converts before and after me, I was hooked on Harvest Moon 64 within minutes. Favoring farming over friendship, I wound up neglecting my friend who owned the game and playing it long after she went to bed. This planted the seed for my love of the Harvest Moon series, a love that has grown continually throughout my life.

I preface this review with my story to provide both a disclaimer and a testament to my credibility: Though I strive for objectivity, I view the game through nostalgia-tinted goggles, which is particularly important to take into account in the case of a game released four console-generations ago. Countless advancements have occurred not just with video games in general but within the Harvest Moon series. However, my experiences playing the game a few years after it came out as well as many times afterward through the years provides me with a unique perspective on how the title has aged.

The most obvious indication of age for any video game is its graphics, and a glimpse at the game today would not leave anyone surprised that it came out in 1999. The character sprites lack detail and the landscapes appear highly pixelated. Even in 1999, the game’s graphics were unimpressive. However, the art style has a peaceful, pastoral aesthetic that suits the game. The only questionable design choice is that the protagonist’s farm, natural land areas, and entire village float in a sea of black nothingness. At each edge of every in-game location, the ground unceremoniously disappears and gives way to a dark void. While I have never found this distracting, I imagine it would be jarring to younger players who are unaccustomed to Nintendo 64 graphics and glaring physical impossibilities.

Of course, the simplicity of the game’s premise negates any need for flashy graphics. The player steps into the work boots of the protagonist in his backwards-ballcap, a young man who inherits from his grandfather a dilapidated old farm near a small village. Put plainly, the farm is a dump. Rocks and stumps litter the fields where Grandpa once grew fruits, vegetables, and flowers. Evidently the old man grew too weak to care for any livestock or poultry, because the barn and chicken coop sit empty. Grandpa’s house is a one-room cabin with only a bed, a table, and a TV in it. To make matters worse, even your dad doesn’t believe in you. He informs you at Grandpa’s funeral that he will return in three years to evaluate your progress as a farmer and accordingly shame or praise you. You only have $100 in your pocket, adding even more pressure.

Such is the farmer’s humble origin story. The subsequent plot sprouts from the player’s choices (what characters you interact with and how, what work you do on the farm) and the passage of time (seasons changing, festivals transpiring). The story is as placid as farm life, and that’s a good thing. Harvest Moon doesn’t need a branching, twisting plotline; it chronicles the progress of a single farmer, a single farm, and a single village. It thrives on its gameplay and its characters. Character highlights include the local winemaker’s sullen daughter who loiters at the bar every night, the bohemian elderly couple who lives in a mountaintop cabin, and the mysterious angler who gives you his old fishing rod and teaches you how to fish. Largely, these characters and their portrayals stand the test of time. The only characterizations that fall flat are those of the eligible bachelorettes after marriage. No matter how engaging your wife may have been before the wedding, afterward she will repeat the same two or three phrases every day for the rest of your life. Worse yet, she will abandon her family, friends, job, and hobbies, only leaving the farm on festival days. As disappointing as these things are in and of themselves, the fact that you spend years wooing her with gifts and scintillating conversation (read: standing in front of her and pressing the A button continually) and expanding your house to make room for her (chopping wood, gathering rocks, and paying the head carpenter to build multiple extensions) exacerbates the problem. I’m not looking for creepy “dating sim” elements in this game or in any other, but it would be nice to see my favorite virtual farmer live out his days with someone who resembles an independent human being, in the same way that the villagers’ personalities and quirks add charm to my experience as a player, realism to the village around me, and meaning to the work I do on the farm day in and day out.

And though I wield a Nintendo 64 controller instead of a watering can, I am undeniably working when I play Harvest Moon 64. (Well, maybe I’m not.) I wake up bright and early each morning and eat one egg, shell and all, for breakfast. Then I plant seeds, water crops, harvest produce, weed the fields, and clear the fields of debris with my hammer and axe, collecting lumber and stone to use for building upgrades as I go. I head to the chicken coop to feed the hens and collect their eggs, and next I run to the barn to feed all the livestock, milk the cows, and shear the sheep. My dog and horse appear to be immortal, but I feed them anyway. When I’m finished with those chores, I visit the village, where I socialize, give gifts, and buy any tools or supplies I need for the farm. If it’s wintertime and the mine is open, I’ll try my luck at finding coins and metals and gemstones, but once I enter I cannot leave until nightfall, and I may waste hours without finding anything. Otherwise, I’ll forage on the mountain and in the forest for plants and herbs to sell, and collect more wood and stone if I still have the energy. Maybe I’ll go fishing, but by this time I’ve usually stayed up later than I intended.

So it goes every day, with the exception of festival days, typhoon days, blizzard days, and sick days. Festival days include the Firefly Festival, Thanksgiving, and the bi-yearly horse races, as well as several others. They variously involve contests for the player to participate in, dances, musical performances at the church, and gift exchanges. These are always exciting and serve to lessen the monotony of life as a farmer. Less exciting and more frustrating are typhoon days, blizzard days, and sick days, the first two of which involve storms that can damage crops, may kill any animals that were left outside the previous night, and—worst of all—prevent you from leaving the house and force you to go straight to bed; sick days also require you to sleep the day away. One typhoon or blizzard or sick day isn’t so bad, but a few in a row could mean your animals die of starvation and your crops wither. Just like farming in real life, you’re a slave to the elements.

Other than these special events that disrupt the rhythm of farm life, the game largely consists of doing the same tasks over and over again in a limited amount of time. Though this type of gameplay does not suit everyone, I consider Harvest Moon 64 a far more accessible and enjoyable example of “slice of life” gameplay than the dull mortgage-paying-adventure that Animal Crossing offers players. Harvest Moon 64 (and all the other entries in the series) excels at making the mundane novel, addictive, and satisfying. The rush I feel playing this game is the same rush that type-A personalities get when they mark an item off their to-do lists. From the comfort of my couch, I can feel the satisfaction and pride that I imagine accompanies a hard day’s work on a farm, but without the back-breaking manual labor. And unlike real-life farmers, who probably wake up exhausted and at least occasionally dread the start of a new day, I sometimes find myself unable to stop playing through “just one more day,” which quickly turns into “just to the end of the season,” and so on.

As sure as the cycle of the seasons is Harvest Moon 64’s music rotation, which, with the exception of cutscenes and festivals, changes only at the beginning of each thirty-day season. If the songs had not been meticulously selected, this might have been a huge detriment to the game’s playability, but thankfully each season’s theme is beautiful and suits its time of year perfectly. Spring’s song is bright and peppy but never irksome; it evokes hope and a sense of new beginnings. The song for summer is fast-paced yet has a laidback, almost “tropical” sound. Perhaps the most beautiful and complex of the seasonal tunes is fall’s song, which never fails to make me feel frenzied, as if I need to be expending every bit of energy within me to prepare for winter. Winter’s own theme sounds mournful, which suits the season’s aesthetic: A blanket of snow covers the land, all the crops have died, there are no more plants to forage, and all the animals must stay inside their barn or coop. The world of winter is quiet and only a shadow of what it will become in spring. These seasonal songs play all day long, only to be replaced by ambient nature noises at nightfall or the sound of rainfall when the weather changes, but they keep me focused, as video game music is designed to do, without ever growing old.

The protagonist never grows old either, literally; there is no end to his youth, or to the game. Earning your father’s approval when he arrives at the end of year three could perhaps he deemed “winning the game,” but that is subjective, and the player can continue to play the game as long after this time as he wishes. One person might call earning a million dollars winning the game, but another might mark success by the number of livestock killed and villagers angered. Like life, Harvest Moon 64 lets you define your own goals, something that I’ve always appreciated about both. I feel thankful that I did not allow my initial prejudices against “a stupid game about farming” to preclude me from enjoying what turned out to be a treasure. Anyone who is curious about the game should pick up a copy; even used copies of the original cartridges are expensive these days, though no more than the price of a new copy of a recently released game, but snagging a digital copy for the Wii U will only set you back $9.99. It’s a much lower-risk proposition than investing in your own farm, and I know many players will love reaping the benefits of virtual agriculture.

Inception

by Sarah Moore

For several years my friends told me that I would love the movie Inception because of its mind-blowing plot. I remember the first time I saw Inception I loved it. To this day, it is my favorite sci-fi movie, and I will probably defend it until I die as an unbelievable movie. The thought that went into it alone accounts for why it is so complex; it’s filled with allusions and action, as well as a kick-butt plot. That’s not even mentioning the cultural relevance it holds and the beautiful soundtrack created by Hans Zimmer. It’s no surprise to me, then, that Inception boasts 94 awards and 205 nominations. Among those awards are four Oscars and three BAFTA awards (“Lists”). It was also named number one on fifty-five critics’ top ten lists (“List”).

The movie starts out with a guy, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character whose name we figure out later, washing up on a beach, getting captured and taken to an old Japanese dude. It flashes forward to a different time, where we open up to a younger-looking version of Dom Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, with Arthur, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The audience finds out that they are in a dream world, trying to extract information from a well-known Japanese businessman named Saito, a younger version of the old Japanese dude from before. Dom’s wife Mal, who we later learn is dead, shows up and almost ruins the plan. Fast forward a little bit, and Dom and Arthur find themselves on the run, but their architect Nash sold them out to Saito, who ends up making them an impossible business proposition – to incept an idea into someone’s mind. After all, if you can extract something, why can’t you leave it there? Dom accepts only because he knows that this is his one shot to go home back to his kids – something he can’t do because the US government thinks he killed his wife, and he ran when he realized that. Through a series of events, they build up a team to perform the inception and do it on one of Saito’s business competitors. Unfortunately, during the inception, Saito and Cobb end up in Limbo – a state of the dream where you literally wash up on the shores of your unconscious. The story comes full circle as we see the repeat and finish of the very first scene. At the end, the audience is left unsure if Cobb is still dreaming or made it back to reality.

There are so many other small plots within the above overarching plot – like Ariadne, played by Ellen Page, and how she fits into the equation. As well as the working relationship between Eames, played by Tom Hardy, and Arthur, Cobb and Arthur, and Eames and Yusuf, the chemist. To describe the intricacies of the plot would take an entire essay itself.

The attention that went into this work of art is perhaps the main reason why I think of Inception as my favorite movie. For example, it took Christopher Nolan, in my opinion, one of the best directors of our time, about eight years to write the script and come up with what he wanted the movie to look like (“25”). His effort certainly paid off, as it is obvious how much attention he paid to detail. For example, the movie’s run-time is two hours and twenty-eight minutes long, which is the length in minutes and seconds of Edith Piaf’s “Non, je ne regrette, rien,” the song that they use in the movie to help them sync the kicks that get them out of the dream world (“25”). The main theme is based off that song, too. The blaring trumpets at the beginning of Piaf’s song slowed down, would imaginably sound a lot like the blaring trombones of the main theme, much like one would hear it in the Inception dream world (“25”).

The cinematography itself required a lot of detail, too, since the movie was shot on film and not digitally (“25”). The hallway scene where Arthur, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt who also did most of his own stunts, fights the guys in the hotel was not CGI.That means he and the guys he fought in the action sequence were put in a rotating hallway that they built to shoot the scene. They used the same technique for the zero-gravity scene, except he was in a harness, to give the illusion of floating. The scene where the train goes straight through the city in the first layer of Fischer’s dream was not CGI, either. They used a tractor truck and dressed it up to look like a train and rammed it through a bunch of cars (“25”).

Another prominent element that adds to the intellect of the movie is the strong Greek allusions. The movie plays on the Greek myth of Ariadne, Theseus, and the Labyrinth. Ariadne in Inception plays both the mythological Ariadne, as well as Daedalus. She is like Daedalus because she creates the mazes, or labyrinths if you will, that are required to make the dream realistic, and to keep them from dying in the dream. She plays the role of her namesake well because she helps Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, navigate his emotional labyrinth and ultimately defeat his own minotaur, Mal. In other words, Cobb is Theseus. How I know that they play into this myth is not only of the purposeful naming of Ariadne but also the fashion department’s attention to detail with her clothing. In most, if not all, of her scenes, Ariadne is depicted wearing red in some form, which is a throwback to the red thread that Ariadne in the myth uses to guide Theseus through the Labyrinth.

I’ve always found Greek Mythology to be interesting, so I really enjoyed the allusions referenced in Inception. I also enjoy being able to analyze this movie; finding out all the intricate attention to detail, and the connection to mythology has been fun for me. It’s refreshing to watch such an intellectual movie. I love the ambiguity at the end of the film, where you don’t know if Cobb is still dreaming or not. My personal theory is that he isn’t or that the entire movie is a dream. I think that, if the entire movie isn’t a hallucination, he isn’t dreaming at the end because he isn’t wearing his wedding ring, which the audience only sees him wearing in dreams. I think it could all be a dream, because of the runtime coinciding with the runtime of Edith Piaf’s song, as well as the soundtrack and how it plays into the ending and throughout the movie.

I also value the equal amounts of humor, romance, and action. While there are some serious moments in this movie – like Ariadne finding out about Cobb’s problem with Mal or the team finding out they might not wake up from the inception job – there are also plenty of light-hearted humorous moments that help keep it balanced. For example, pretty much any interaction between Arthur and Eames is going to end up funny, and Eames himself is the main example of comic relief, like when he plays a little trick on Saito in the second layer of the inception job. Also, the romance of Cobb and Mal is obvious, as well as serious, but there’s an underlying very subtle romance that seems to go on between Arthur and Ariadne, as shown in the “Gimme a kiss” scene in the second level of the dream. The action is also spectacular. Every time I watch it, I feel like I want to go out and kick some butt. The music going along to each action sequence helps it exponentially in creating the tension, like in the rotating hallway scene – the fast pace of the music gives the allusion of time running out for Arthur to vanquish the projections after him.

Every time I watch this movie it takes me on an emotional rollercoaster – it ranges from being on the edge of my seat to outright laughing to awe. There are even moments that make me so anxious that sometimes when I’m re-watching it I’ll skip them, like Ariadne finding Cobb’s elevator of memories trapping Mal and his guilt in his subconscious. I know what she’s going to find, and that almost makes it worse, because she’s walking into far more issues than she knows. In contrast, a laugh-out-loud moment is when Yusuf is in the van on the first level, and there’s this giant chase scene that ends with the van doing a barrel roll and then landing safely on its tires in a gravel area. Yusuf laughs and turns around to his sleeping companions with a “Did you see that?!” only to give a little shake of his head and drive off. The timing of that humor also makes the audience feel a bit of catharsis after the anxiety-inducing action sequence that he and Arthur go through.

I find that this movie shows complexity, not just in itself, but also in humans and their relationships. For example, the main characters and even the background characters, like Nash at the beginning, all have motives and back stories that tie into the plot and make it more convoluted and interesting. One of the most important lessons that I’ve learned in life is that each person has a story, and their story can affect your story. Sometimes as a writer I forget that and get caught up in concentrating on my core characters instead of also focusing on the background characters. I feel like in life we are in danger of doing that as well. It is refreshing to see a movie where every character is important in some way. I aspire to one day achieve a masterpiece like Inception where readers will enjoy the puzzles that I enact with my plot.

Works Cited

“25 Kickass and Interesting Facts About Inception.” KickassFacts.com, Kickass Facts Fact Encyclopedia, 25 Apr. 2016, www.kickassfacts.com/25-kickass-and-interesting-facts-about-inception/.

“List of Accolades Received by Inception.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 21 Aug. 2017, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accolades_received_by_Inception.

Vaccines: Fact and Fiction

By Kristin Hitchcock

           Only a couple months ago, it was announced that a groundbreaking discovery could put a vaccination for HIV on the selves within the next five years. HIV - the virus that causes AIDS and has, since its discovery, caused nearly 50 million deaths - could, with the use of this simple vaccine, be well on its way to being considered ‘extinct’. We should be seeing jubilation across the internet. Look at all the lives we can save; all the people who will never have to endure the slow death-march of AIDS. Instead, however, the announcement was met with considerable backlash. “It’s just another vaccine my pediatricians will push on my children.” “Another vaccine that can wreck havoc on my and my children’s health.” Vaccines, the invention that was once considered the glory of modern medicine, are not thought of with contempt and mistrust. What happened?

            A lot of things actually.

            The questioning of vaccines has been a long road. It all began roughly in the year 1998, when a British scientist released a study that made a connection between vaccines and Autism. Despite the fact the study only surveyed twelve children and despite that fact that the conclusions were found to be ‘doctored’, the fire was lit. Since then, parents from around the globe have been anxious to vaccinate their children, citing studies, myths, and other parents’ warnings as prime reasons they avoided or delayed vaccines. Simply put, people are understandably fearful. After all, the ingredient list of vaccines is normally full of very long, scary sounding names (mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde, oh my!) and the facts surrounding vaccines have become impossibly murky. However, it doesn’t have to be this way.

            There are lots of good reasons, of course, to delay or avoid vaccinating children. For example, if your child has an autoimmune disorder, vaccinating them is certainly not encouraged. Nor should your child be vaccinated if they have an allergy to one of the components in the vaccine. If your child has had a moderate to severe illness, furthermore, it might be a good idea to delay vaccinations until your child is back to their healthy selves. There are also the normal precautions, such as not giving a vaccine to a child too young, or getting a vaccine while pregnant. However, besides these exceptions, vaccines are nearly always safe, with very few children even getting minor side effects. In fact, reactions to the DTP vaccine, one of the most attacked and controversial vaccines, is only one child in a million. Plus, out of those, most reactions are exceedingly minor.  

            Simply put, it is clearly worth the small risk to get vaccinated, as vaccines have greatly reduced childhood death and our mortality rate. For example, before the vaccine existed, nearly everyone contracted the measles and hundreds died from it each year. Thanks to the vaccine however, there are now fewer than a dozen cases reported in the USA each year. Diphtheria, another diseases commonly vaccinated against, dropped from killing 15,000 Americans a year to killing zero. Rubella, as well, dropped from killing 2,000 babies a year and causing 11,000 miscarriages, to killing absolutely no one.

            Furthermore, many of the fears surrounding vaccines are based all most entirely on myths and false information. For example, the vaccine-autism controversy has caused many parents to delay or skip vaccination their children all together. However, like we have already seen, that suggestion has been disproven and since recanted. In fact, several studies have investigated the link between autism and vaccines, but have found no connection. Another, slightly lesser known study, drew the conclusion that infant immune systems can’t handle vaccines. This too, however, has been recanted and it has been proven that infants can theoretically handle around 10,000 vaccines at a time. Some might also argue that natural immunity from getting the disease is better than vaccine-acquired immunity. This is true, to some extent. While getting the diseases would make you have a higher immunity than the vaccine ever could, the risk of dying from the disease is far greater than the risk of you dying from the vaccine by over 1000%.

            Another argument against vaccines is surrounding the perceived unsafe ingredients they contain. While some of these chemicals can be harmful in large amounts, there is only trace amount contained within the vaccine. Nearly every chemical is harmful in large does, even water, so this is hardly a reason to avoid vaccines. Parents might also be fearful of that the vaccine will give their child the very diseases they are trying to prevent. However, this is biologically impossible. Vaccines are not active viruses, and therefore can’t actually infect anyone. While some side effects to the vaccine are sometimes also symptoms associated with the disease, this is actually the immune system’s reaction to the pathogen, not the disease itself.

            As we have seen, there is actually very little reason not to get vaccines. Vaccinations not only greatly improve the chances of your child surviving into adulthood, but also increase our health as a nation. There is almost no reason to avoid vaccinating your child; the fear surrounding vaccines is almost entirely unfounded, and yet still prevents countless parents from vaccinating their child, which only leads to deaths and a destruction of the herd immunity our society has so carefully cultivated. Rise up against fear and get your children vaccinated. 

Universal

By Kristin Hitchcock

          There are a couple major events of a person’s life; getting married, for example, or perhaps even buying your first house. However, few events are quite as large as having your first child. The birth of your first baby not only constitutes an instant life-style change, but also immediately imposes a new person into your life and directly influences nearly every future decision you will ever make, big and small. No longer can you simply run to the grocery store. Instead, you must collect an ensemble of items – toys, diapers, blankets, emergency diapers, changes of clothes, emergency-emergency diapers – and go through a period of immense planning just to run out and get milk. At the store, as well, you no long find yourself drifting carelessly through the aisles, but rushing towards your destination, only stopping for a few seconds in the toy aisle as the baby leans haphazardly towards all the brightly-colored objects.  To say the least, becoming a parent is life-changing.

            My daughter was born a couple minutes after midnight after nearly twenty-four hours of active labor. By all accounts, I should have been tired. Luckily, however, our bodies figured out a long time ago that being tired was simply not an option for new parents, and I was radiating with energy. This came in handy on my daughter’s first full night after birth. The first day went unimaginably smooth. She slept and ate; I slept and ate. It was generally an easy affair, and then the sun set. For one reason or another, my newborn daughter suddenly decided that sleeping was not what she wanted to do. She cried, and cried, and cried – for nearly four hours. The only thing, it seemed, that would calm her down was bouncing, so that’s exactly what I did. We sat on the bed and bounced, we walked and bounced, and we even stole a rocking chair from the next room over to bounce in. Until finally, after four hours, she fell asleep, only of course, to wake up two hours later to eat and start the whole cycle over again. If anything, becoming a mom has taught me patience.

 I’ve always been big on research; I research everything. When I started college, for example, I spent months researching each one I was interested in – their professors, classes, rankings (and how those rankings are decided), food options, prices, everything. I’d much rather be over-prepared than under-prepared. So, being myself, when my husband and I decided to have a baby, I began my enquiries. I looked into nutrition, every kind of birth possible, the vaccine vs. anti-vaccine debate, breastfeeding, common pregnancy problems, every conceivable thing one might ever want to know about getting pregnant, being pregnant, and taking care of a baby. I knew how to change a diaper five different ways, had the growth charts memorized, and knew every bottles’ pros and cons. Then, my daughter was born and I realized I knew absolutely nothing. My long, memorized list of how to comfort a crying baby went completely out the window as soon as my daughter made a peep. I suddenly forgot how to change a diaper or burp a baby. I was a complete novice, no matter how much I researched or how many articles I read. Becoming a parent has taught me humility.

            A couple months later, when my daughter was more aware of her surroundings but still not exactly coordinated enough to interact with them, she began to do something that astonished me. Anytime I was holding her and drinking – whether it was from a cup, bottle, can, anything – she would always chaotically try to grab or knock the drink out of my hand. One day, after wondering why in the world she wanted the cup, I offered it to her, only to watch her attempt to place her mouth on the rim. It then became clear to me that she understood how cups work. This little person who isn’t even developed enough to sit up, who hasn’t even had anything but a bottle, is observant enough and smart enough to figure out on her own how cups work and what they’re used for, and she wants a part of it. It just blew my mind. Being a mother has taught me wonder.

            Becoming a mom has taught me a lot of things and changed me in a lot of ways. My nights are no longer spent in front of the TV or on the computer, but instead with my daughter. I’ve learned not to sweat the small stuff, and stand up for myself when someone challenges my views. More than anything though, I’ve learned how to selflessly love someone. 

Ivy and Passionflower

By Kristin Hitchcock

When I was young, my grandmother had a macaw. He was an old, weathered bird whose brightly colored feathers were constantly sticking this way and that or laying forgotten at the bottom of the cage, pulled out by their aging owner. I had continually been told that in its more youthful years he had always been relatively friendly, even flying around the house and landing on people’s shoulders. However, by the time I came around, the red-colored bird was quite grumpy. He would screech if anyone he disapproved of walked past his cage, which really chalked up to everyone but a very select number of people, and snap at your fingers if you came too close. I was constantly informed not to wander too close out of fear that I might lose a finger – a warning I never failed to obey.

As the bird continued to age, he became quieter and retreated to the back of his cage, though he would still become rather animated when the doorbell rang, until eventually he passed away into the night. My grandmother buried him outside in the backyard at the top of a large, unnatural mound. I was never sure how the mound got there exactly, but I always assumed it was left over from some construction project. It sat right next to the swimming pool, and my cousins and I commonly used it to peer down into the pool’s depths in search of tadpoles and frogs. However, one afternoon after the old bird had been buried, my cousin and I climbed up the worn mound, planning on gazing into the pool like we normally did, only to be struck by an indention at the top where the bird had been buried. It was impossible to stand on the top without trampling over the poorly marked grave, and we quickly saw our way off of the tiny graveyard. We never climbed to the top of the mound again. Occasionally, we would romp around at its base, but mostly we would circumvent it all together, not even daring to venture into that side of the yard most of the time. The weeds that were once kept at bay by our feet started to overtake the tiny hill, twisting haphazardly across the sandy soil until they finally reached the top. During the spring, the mound would be decorated with the green buds of poison ivy and the white blooms of passionflower, only to be left with brown, twisting vines in the winter. Once, after I found a very unusual, bumpy rock, my oldest cousin hid it at the top of the mound, knowing very well that I wouldn’t go there. And she was right, I never did retrieve it.

Years later, my grandmother fell ill. It was cancer, again, and the odds weren’t in her favor this time. We all knew it was coming, but being so young, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect when my mother picked me up early from school and informed me that my grandmother didn’t have much longer to live. When we arrived at her house, the family was gathered around in the living room as my grandmother laid on the couch, going in and out of consciousness. I held my little sister in the other room as yet another life faded from this world, my back leaning against the old bird’s cage. The mound was visible through the sliding glass door.

A few months later we pulled up to the house one last time. We had to pick a couple more boxes of my grandmother’s belongings – pictures, diaries, her collection of Dean Kootz books – before the house went to auction in only a couple days. We didn’t talk much and got our task done quickly. As we pulled out of the driveway, I could see the top of the mound on the other side of the fence, the vines just starting to send out fresh leaves. I wondered if the new owners would dig it up, and what they would do with the old bird if, and when, they found it. 

Handling Climate Change

by Mallory England

Melting snow caps and dying polar bears, forest fires and rising temps, fiercer storms and rising tides. In small, land-locked towns all over America, these words mean little -- and what they do hold is thought of as a problem for someone else. Easily dismissed by many, these descriptions can seem ambiguous and distant. But, they don’t have to.

According to research done by Popular Science, a scientific magazine, from “November 2012 - December 2013; 2,258 peer-reviewed climate articles by 9,136 authors; 1 author rejected man-made global warming.” (popsci.com). Nearly 10,000 authors, who are trained professionals in their field agree on this startling fact: we are the problem.

But, instead of pointing fingers, let’s take a step back and review some general facts. The Climate Reality Project defines the “ten indicators of a warming world” as increased sea levels, decreased glacier masses, a higher temperature of the lower atmosphere and over land, oceans, and at sea surface levels. And this information may help account for the fact that global sea levels have risen about eight inches in the last century (climate.nasa.gov).

This makes sense given the rate of ice sheets melting in Earth’s polar regions. In a massive 20-year-long study done by NASA and the European Space Agency, “melting ice from both poles has been responsible for a fifth of the global rise in sea levels since 1992, 11 millimeters in all”, as cited by Deutsche Welle, a German broadcasting company. That’s a pretty significant amount over the past 20 years, and the glaciers in Greenland are the most rapidly changing pieces in this puzzle, contributing twice as much to rising sea levels as its Antarctic counterparts (dw.com).

NASA, a key research entity in the climate change investigation, states, “Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth’s orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives” (climate.nasa.gov/evidence). With that being said, it is evident global temperatures have increased over the past 100 years, and even more rapidly within the past 20 years as shown in the glacier melting statistics.

So, what should we do about this phenomena? As mentioned in the opening sentence, there are several effects of rising temperatures. While these scenarios may not affect some of us personally, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t see the challenges as a call to action.

Some of the things we can do are simple, one of the most basic examples being recycling. Interestingly enough, the United States seem to be the last people wanting to jump on the environmental bandwagon, with other countries already fervently looking for innovative ways to produce clean energy. Clean energy can be defined as any process that doesn’t create pollution, namely greenhouse gases, into the atmosphere. A few of these gases include carbon dioxide, methane, and hydrofluorocarbons. These gases absorb and emit radiation within the thermal infrared range, meaning they act like a microwave in the sky, roasting us.

One recent instance that holds national relevance is the constant burn of Bridgeton Sanitary Landfill in Missouri. This landfill, according to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, encompasses 52 acres of surface land and 240 feet below ground. The accumulated waste has a thickness of 320 feet overall, nearly 100 feet taller than Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, France. In the early 1990s, the Department of Natural Resources saw evidence of a fire burning in the walls of the quarry where the landfill is located Then, on Christmas Eve in 2010, there were unusually elevated temperatures registering at the gas extraction wells. Upon further testing, the levels of hydrogen and carbon monoxide concentrations were exponentially higher than normal and methane concentrations had plummeted, creating the perfect conditions for subsurface smoldering. As noted by the Dept. of Natural Resources, this type of smoldering is non flammable until exposed to the atmosphere.

Within the past 6 years, the owners of the landfill have taken several preventative measures to ensure this smoldering event stays a smoldering event and doesn’t become a full-blown surface fire. A landfill manager from Marion Co., TN has visited the Bridgeton Landfill and Quarry several times to research the event. Stating he has walked over the ground where the smoldering is occurring, the Marion Co. manager notes it feels as though you are walking over the pits of Hell, feeling the rumbling and uneasiness of the ground as the Earth’s core is fighting its way to the top. The liners of the quarry have to be changed every six months at Bridgeton, whereas at the Marion Co. landfill, every two years suffices.

So, why is a landfill in the middle of the country a concern for anyone else? It’s not disrupting our oceans, it’s not causing widespread deaths, so why is this event significant? Men are risking their lives everyday to work on this landfill and quarry site. They are burning the excess waste to try to contain the burning, but if that isn’t enough, or the fire reaches the surface, the affects could be fatal.

Believe it or not, events like these, while under the surface of the Earth, are still contributors to the overall global warming effect we are experiencing. Global warming is the idea that the Earth is getting exponentially warmer and that eventually it will become too hot, killing everything. Climate change seems to be a more mild term, but is the idea that climates, the weather conditions prevailing in an area over a long period of time, are changing -- to be warmer or cooler. Generally, climates are more regionalized, meaning that different areas will experience different patterns. Overall, climate change indicates that there is a change, and that it changes more than just temperatures. Climate change affects not only the temperature, but also the severity and intensity of storms and other weather patterns.

Basically, the takeaway is that climate change is something that has been proven by more than one professional in the science field and that it is something affecting our perspectives of the environment overall. Instead of viewing the planet as something to use as merely a resource, it should be seen as a beautiful place, that if sustainably sourced, also provides for all humans.

Three Personal Arguments

Adam

            I met the person I am still with from a few mutual friends that are not in either of our lives anymore. Walking up to the fire that night, I felt warmth from more than just the flames. I had seen him before with our friends all around but he was not even an acquaintance yet. Looking back now, it took a long time for us to find the same path and, then, to walk down it. He started as an intense and spirited friend who taught me what it meant to be carefree. He shared his love of hiking, and I shared my love of caving. We would climb up slippery waterfalls, and he would always be the one leading. I would be close behind, though, basking in his bravery and just trying to keep up.

Climbing straight up a hill with thick grass, I was once too enamored with the thought of his company as my hand reached up for a stick that indefinitely turned out to be a snake. After I slid down, frantically shrieking, he was right beside me trying to help; a memory I will never forget. I was visibly shaken, but noticing his consistency in standing next to me helped take the fear away.

Guiding me hand-in-hand, I was always the clumsy one who went down when a slippery rock was anywhere in sight. That didn’t change his view as we walked across the river holding tightly as my feet glided and slipped up on the foundation that the schools of fish were resting on. I didn’t once fall—onto the rocks, that is.

Caving was always my forte, but it was nice to have a companion. Only years later would I find out that the brave man who came with me was afraid of caves all along. Even through lifting me up over unforeseen rock faces as I heard the words “you can trust me, I’ll catch you,” he never once faltered. Even though it was small, finding out that secret that someone had braved one of their own fears to be alongside me was enamoring. It helped show me what could never have been seen before, and the beginning of trust began to form.

Later on in our relationship, we took a trip to the zoo. I was so thrilled to see the meerkats and the majestic lions. We walked through all my favorite exhibits until we stopped at a family of giraffes. The mother and father giraffe were standing close to their child as they began to hug; embracing each other’s neck. The moment was so innocent as we watched families walk by with their laughing children who could not believe what the giraffes were doing. With our young love, we could also see the different displays of love coming from all around us.  

Home

             Beyond the red, brick house that was my childhood home I would run through the woods and over the small barbed-wire fence to my haven in the woods. From the moment I could walk, I found solace in the different sections of my yard, and it would turn into something as simple as a playhouse or something as wild as a jungle. There were days when I would look out the kitchen window and see lions roaring back at me as the brown and black monkeys jumped through the trees. Beyond the fence I was first carried over gently by my older brother, was the treehouse with branches as thick as the trunk itself. I learned authority in the swaying leaves as I was only allowed to venture off behind the fence when my older brother could take me. I would run along beside him and his friends as they watched over me and my tomboyish ways. I learned patience a few years later when I became the one to wait for my younger brother to follow me through the woods and over that same fence to show him the now ancient tree.

Hidden right behind that same fence, I found a tree in my teenage years that was tall and skinny with branches protruding everywhere. This was the place I would run to for comfort or when I wanted to read my favorite book during the day. The tree held me as I went through difficulties in my life and even when I wanted to pretend I was in another world hiding away from imaginary beings. Right outside the back door of my brick home was a deck that stood tall and made an imaginary tunnel as we all played house and hide-and-seek. One year, we were gifted with a hand-made swing that I could climb down to from the top of the deck. Ahead of this lovable habitat, right across the paved road, was what we called “the dirt path” in the center of the neighborhood. It consisted of small, man-made dirt roads surrounded by thin trees for four-wheeling fun. As we ran through the maze, secret wooden trap doors would appear and suddenly we were in another dimension. Double-dares to ride down the steepest hill we thought we would ever see were always carried out by the older children in the neighborhood.

As I grew, the treehouse and memories made with my brother there withered away until, one day, it was gone. Construction turned the lush, green field surrounding the once towering giant into a rocky cul-de-sac never to be finished due to lack of funds. All the other memories still live and thrive as they grow older with us now. The field connecting everything sways in the wind as I keep it in my heart as an eternal resting place for where my maturity and creativity began. Despite the pointless construction, the reading tree still stands, as well, waiting to be discovered and shared with the siblings who all taught me about imagination as I continue to be inspired by the resilience of that reading haven.

The Gorge

by Laura Nealon

            The Gorge is a natural swimming hole in Westel, Tennessee. The Gorge demands its visitors to hike almost a mile through dirt and thick brush deep down into the woods to Piney Creek. I first got to go there the summer of 2010 when I was fifteen years old. My older cousins, Jacob and Joseph, took me because I was pretty much permanently attached to their sides; I also could not drive just yet. Joseph and Jacob would lead the way down the steep pathway to the Gorge, and I would follow along and pretend that they were my brothers because I was an only child. The walk to the Gorge always felt like an adventure into unknown territory. The pine trees towering above us forced me to realize how small my cousins and I were in relation to the world. When we would pass strangers on the narrow dirt path, I would think of the complexity of who they were as people with lives I had no way of knowing about. A thrill would bubble up inside of me knowing that they did not know my cousins or I. We were just fellow Gorge enjoyers to them and vice-versa.  

            Natural rock formations tower above the steely waters of the Gorge. Some of the rock formations jut out just enough from the rock walls for people to have room to jump off of. Caves dot the base of the formations, and that is where people would lay their bags and towels. The rock underneath my feet was slimy and cold, and it reminded me to guide myself carefully. Each step had to be meticulously precise or one was in danger of slipping on the sharp rocks or stepping on a broken beer bottle or a soggy cigarette. Jacob would stand as close to the ledge as possible, but he would never jump in or even get into the water. Despite his outward tough appearance and considerable size and stature, Jacob feared the Gorge, and we always knew it but never spoke of that fact out loud. Joseph, on the other hand, would leap with his scrawny legs from some of the highest rocky ledges and cannonball straight into the deepest part of the Gorge without much hesitation. Some of the ledges were so high, that you would have to wear shoes to jump in because otherwise the impact would break open your heels.

 I finally mustered up the courage, halfway brave and halfway trying to prove my incredible teenage maturity to my older cousins, to scale a small cliff to sling myself off of. At the top, after much clawing and dragging myself over muddy moss and sharp rocks, my eyes nearly bugged out of my head when I noticed how far I would have to fall to land in the water below. I looked around and spotted kids, with dirty feet and wet hair stuck to their faces, from my old elementary school waiting behind me for their turn to jump. I saw Jacob and Joseph standing below beckoning me to jump. And I saw my trembling hands gripping my knees as I bent over to take a deep breath in an attempt to fill my lungs with possibly their last rush of oxygen. And then I jumped. I remember falling like I was going to land on the back of my shoulders. The rocks and the people and the water all mushed together in my rushed vision as I felt the water kiss the backs of my shoulder blades. Underneath the surface, I propelled down spinning and kicking my legs to regain some control of my body. The cold water filled into the gaps in my nostrils and my ears; my outstretched arms finally found the divide between the cold water and the humid air after what seemed to me like minutes. Bursting forth out of the waters of the Gorge and discovering that I was still alive and that my lungs would fill again with oxygen made my face configure into a semi-permanent smile. My cousins cheered from the rocky ledge and laughed. With joy welling up inside me, I climbed out of the water to join them knowing that I had conquered a little fear of mine.

            The Gorge forced me out of my comfort zone. I leapt from the edge of all that I had known into uncharted territory. The Gorge was sublime. I stared in awe at the dark rocks dripping with moss and the cold trickling water racing down the cliffs. The way the water intimately enveloped a person with a swirl of white foam captivated my gaze, and my ears perked up at the crackling echo of the splash after someone finally trusted the water enough that they finally decided to jump. Sunlight reflected off of the water and danced like the ocean on the walls and roofs of the little caves that we sat inside of watching everyone either face their fears or hold back from testing the dark water. It was terrifyingly beautiful. My body filled with electric thrill as I realized that the unknown was not always so horrible, and that sometimes the risk of stepping out of familiarity and into a thing unknown is worth all of the trembling hands and deep breaths and tightly shut eyes and pounding heartbeats.

Myanmar (editorial)

by Andrew Hinman

A lot of Americans in this modern era, despite having the ability to search and 

retrieve any piece of information they could ever dream for in the palm of their hand, 

remain disconnected from the current state of global affairs. And who can blame them; 

such \an abundant wealth of knowledge is overwhelming to say the very least. It’s for 

the same reason that people don’t stop to consider the individual lives unfolding around 

them when they are in a crowd; the human brain is simply not often up to the challenge, 

if ever. This, of course, leads to an individual cherry picking what is most worthy of their 

attention or processing time, with many Americans being content to simply intake a 

trusted news station, radio, or newspaper. An unfortunate consequence of this that many 

of the modern tragedies occurring right now are glossed over, or never have light shone 

on them. The average American is content to not be updated on civil war in Yemen, the 

concentration camps in North Korea, or in particular, the borderline genocide happening 

in Myanmar. While the ethnic cleansing in the Rakhine state appears to many Americans 

as being not worth their attention, it ultimately is a significant global issue that Americans 

need to address by shedding their shells of apathy and by thinking concisely about what 

can be done concerning the current situation. 

The Rohingya are no strangers to trials and tribulations; as Michelle Kosinski puts it, 

“the Rohingya are considered to be among the world's most persecuted people.” Despite 

being the homeland of Rohingya for generations, the Rakhine state in Myanmar is 

controlled by a government that considers them Bangladeshi. Yet Bangladesh considers 

them to be Burmese, leaving them in an odd state of being without a home. They make up 

less than 5% of the Burmese population, and are often at odds with the country’s 

military-focused government. These tensions came to a head this August when an insurgent 

group composed of Rohingya “attacked more than 30 police posts in northern Rakhine”

(Kosinski). Immediately after, huge waves of refugees began flooding towards 

Bangladesh as the Burmese military began a crackdown on the Rohingya. 

Both Bangladesh and Myanmar are almost eight thousand miles from American 

soil, and many Americans find the entire situation to be either under the radar or irrelevant 

to their everyday life. Truth be told, it is easy to dismiss this conflict as something that 

America shouldn’t become involved in; something that should naturally sort itself out. 

And based off past mistakes like Vietnam and several Latin American governments, 

many citizens feel it evident that nothing should be done. So why, then, should this struggle 

matter to the average U.S. Citizen? The answer is apparent just by looking at the aftermath 

of this last month; as a BBC article put it, “observers on the ground and satellite images 

confirm many razed Muslim villages across northern Rakhine state.” The insurgents in 

August kicked the hornet’s nest, and the military in Myanmar won’t stop until they’ve 

eradicated the presence of the Rohingya. This includes the destruction of villages as well 

as torture and rape of those fleeing the destruction. Joanne Lin of USA Today discovered 

in recent findings the creation of “specific military units responsible for committing these 

violent attacks, which amount to crimes against humanity.” Apathy was not an acceptable 

response to something like this when the SS-Totenkopfverbände funneled “undesirables” 

into concentration camps, and it is not an acceptable response as Rohingya people have 

their families, homes, and livelihoods burned to the ground.

In terms of international response, thankfully apathy has not been the leading reaction; as 

Kosinski puts it, “the US will provide a humanitarian aid package worth nearly 

$32 million to Rohingya who have fled violence in Myanmar's Rakhine State in recent 

weeks.” While a nice gesture of support, it is not enough. The refugees remain without 

proper homes, their lands and villages burned. As Lin states, “The Rohingya can wait no 

longer”. For now, they are living on Bangladesh soil, but the government of Bangladesh 

views them as Rohingya, and not Bangladeshi. It is a matter of time before they have 

outworn their welcome.

  
Americans need to keep up to date with the issues around the globe, such as what’s 
happening in Myanmar. They should take advantage of their wealth of data accessible in 
an instant, because they are the ones with the voting power. Politicians depend on votes 
and the favor of the masses to change the world. The people have the ultimate say in 
America, but they can’t talk about something they aren’t aware exists. Only after the 
people have made their say, will politicians finally listen and seek a resolution about 
situations like Myanmar. Until then, it’s a timebomb left in stasis.

Works Cited

"Myanmar: What Sparked Latest Violence in Rakhine?." Myanmar: What Sparked Latest 
Violence in Rakhine? - BBC News. BBC, 19 Sept. 2017. Web. 1 Nov. 2017. 
<http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41082689>.

Dias, Elizabeth. "U.S. Considers Limiting Military Ties to Myanmar Over Rohingya Crisis." 
 U.S. May Limit Military Ties to Myanmar Over Rohingya Crisis. TIME, 
21 Sept. 2017. <http://time.com/4952270/myanmar-rohindya-us-military-ties/>.

Kosinski, Michelle, et al. “US to provide $32 million in aid to Rohingya.” CNN, 
Cable News Network, 21 Sept. 2017, 
<www.cnn.com/2017/09/20/politics/us-aid-rohingya-myanmar/index.html>.

Lin, Joanne. "Halting Myanmar Ethnic Cleansing: 5 Critical Steps." Ethnic Cleansing in 
Myanmar: How to Stop It. USA Today, 22 Oct. 2017. Web. 1 Nov. 2017. 
<https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/10/22/five-critical-actions
-halt-ethnic-cleansing-myanma-joanne-lin-column/779739001/>.