Category: CRQ

Children of Criminals CRQ

The New York Times article I chose for my CRQ was When Parents Are in Prison, Children Suffer by KJ Dell’Antonia. My attention was drawn to this article through the lines, “She is just one of the five million American children who have had a parent incarcerated at some point in their lives. Her father’s sentence is hers, too” (Dell’Antonia Para 3). As an avid watcher of Law and Order and as an American citizen who watches the news, I feel as though I have a good grasp on the insanely large number of people incarcerated for a multitude of reasons. However bad these people are, and I believe most of them are the worst kind of bad people, I rarely think about the families they leave behind. Every man behind bars has a mother and every woman behind bars has a father and depending how present or not present these people were in their lives, they are left to pick up the pieces after sentencing. I thought that the beginning of the article was common sense, of course a child of a criminal is negatively affected by their parent’s actions and jail sentence, how could they not be? It is sad to think that people can not stop their bad ways when they have children. I did not however realize that there were very few systems in place to help these children and that the burden often fell to their other parent or extended family. ““A prison sentence for a parent shouldn’t be a life sentence for a family,” said Ryan Chao, the Casey foundation’s vice president for civic sites and community change” (Dell’Antonia Para 11). I was intrigued to read about the Casey Foundations programs and plans to help convicts when they get out of prison to get their lives back on track for their kids and their programs to hopefully stop the cycle of crime from generation to generation. After reading this article, I realized that every person can see that the children of criminals are innocents, born into an unfortunate situation that was not of their choosing and that they need help. The children are not the bad guys and if the statistics are true then over five million American children are at risk because of the choices that their parents made. This really got me thinking why I had never heard of these programs or this problem before. Why are the children of criminals not talked about more? Just because their parents made mistakes and are possibly bad people does not make their innocent children guilty.

Dell’Antonia, KJ. “When Parents Are in Prison, Children Suffer.” Well. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 May 2016.

Suicide CRQ

This article, ‘Buddy Check on 22!’ Veterans Use Social Media to Fight Suicide, shone a positive light to social media and while the statistics and things these people who sacrificed their lives for the country go through on and off the line of duty are alarming and horrifying, it is so nice to know that they have a support system if they need one. This entire article was compelling, sad and positive all at once but the lines that called me from the page were, “It was March 22. To many civilians, just another Tuesday. But to thousands of veterans and active-duty soldiers, the 22nd of every month is a reminder to make a suicide prevention spot-check on former comrades.” To think of thousands of men and women feeling a certain way on a certain day every single month, having flashbacks to war zones, was hard to believe but the lines had tones of compassion and camaraderie and it was so positive and uplifting to think of these thousands of men and women being able to have an accessible safety net of people to turn to. Unfortunately, those who have support systems are still afflicted to the point where a support system doesn’t help or matter. My life had never been touched by suicide until last spring when a girl that I had gone to school with took her life a month before her expected high school graduation. Once word got out and the school brought in grief counselors, I remember everyone going back through her Facebook, Instagram and Twitter trying to find a clue or something foreboding that we all had missed. Word got out that she had sent text messages to four or five of her closest friends minutes before she decided to take her own life but those people thought she was being her usual sweet, thoughtful self and had no idea that those would be her final words. She had been active on social media but there were no signs that anyone felt pointed to what she was going to do. I began to wonder if there really had been no one for her to talk to who could have helped her make a different decision. I looked at my own life and thought of the people I would go to if I were having similar thoughts. However, Natalie, like many other people, was afflicted with depression and while I could think of a list of people a mile long to help me out, her brain blocked her from thinking of a single person. I can only imagine my brain blocking me and then being filled with war images of death, violence and dust like the veterans that suffer with PTSD. We will never really know the thoughts that go through a specific person’s head before they decide that life is no longer worth living, but it is comforting to know that those that come home alive from the war, have a growing system of support. It would be nice to know that every person had this same net of support through an accessible social media platform. Are schools, private agencies and the government doing enough to raise awareness about suicide across the country?

 

Games You Can’t Win CRQ

This Op-Doc from the New York Times called, Games You Can’t Win by David Osit and Malika Zouhali-Worrall was by far the darkest thing that I have had to write about in this class. While many aspects of the article and video were very poignant, what called me from the page was, “While their reasons for creating these games vary, one element clearly unites these developers: the video game is their chosen artistic medium, and programming is their paintbrush.” Upon first reading this the comparing of these dark video games to art really surprised me and I felt as though it was an unjust comparison. How were these dark and upsetting video games anything compared to a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat that hangs in the most famous museums in the world or even a piano piece written by a child? When the authors of the article portion of the Doc-Ed opened up with the line, “Video games are generally associated with guns and explosions — a medium better suited to escapism than intimacy” I got the impression that the authors felt videogames were just a game that teenage boys played and one that they did not deem held any other merits other then to express pent up aggression. As a senior in high school, brother spends more time playing on his XBOX then he does with my parents, a fact that I am sure many sisters of teenage brothers would corroborate. It was weird for me to think that his controlling an animated football player to run up and down an animated football field or defending an animated country in animated war was art. Once I watched the video and saw the plight and trauma that the three experiences caused on the four people highlighted in the documentary, I understood why someone, like the animated football maker or animated war maker, would want their story told in a way that instead of reading it as a book or hearing it as a song or viewing it hanging on the wall, could be felt and seen step by step in a video game. As hard as it would be to watch and to play a “game” that can not be won and demonstrates a sex change or living with a child with terminal cancer, it is a way to convey every emotion and the feeling of a never ending struggle just like Basquiat conveyed on canvas or the way the Coronation of Napoleon tells a story hinging in the Louvre. Why is it that people, like I was, are turned off by the idea of immersing themselves in a game about a child dying from terminal cancer but could stare at a paining of mass annihilation or a traumatic event in history for hours in awe?

Osit, David, and Malika Zouhali-worrall. “Games You Can’t Win.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 16 Mar. 2016. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.

Discussing Politics Is Not For the Lighthearted CRQ

In the politically charged opinion piece by Arthur C. Brooks, the lines that called out to me were about the distaste that people from opposite parties had for each other. Brooks writes that “[W]e also don’t like one another very much. Thirty-eight percent of Democrats have a “very unfavorable” view of Republicans, and 43 percent of Republicans hold that view of Democrats. About half of “consistently liberal” Americans say most of their friends share their views, and about a third say it’s important to live in a place where that is so. For those who are “consistently conservative,” these preferences are even more pronounced” (Brooks para 5). Originally upon reading this, his words surprised me and I doubted the validity of the statement. However, upon looking at my own life, I realized that the people I associate with and, on a wider scale, those that my parents associate with, all have the same political bumper stickers on their cars or signs in their front yards this election season. This confirmed and made me see the possibility of this in the rest of the country, that when it comes to politics birds of a feather (generally) flock together. It occurred to me that this “flocking together” is the easy route, realizing that it is easy to go to dinner and talk about politics when everyone can generally agree without getting heated. Of course it would be nice if people from opposing parties didn’t have to discuss politics in a way that is “more contemptuous than angry, overflowing with sneering, mockery and disgust (Brooks para 9)”, but in today’s world that is how politics are not only talked about over the dinner table, but in televised debates between opposing party candidates. Since living together is the easy route, the hard route would be, in my opinion, trying to persuade those who did not share your views in an educated, calm, neighborly manor instead of the fervent anger or feeling of the others stupidity that is seen and felt in most debates. It is easier to get mad and understandably so when it comes to something you are passionate about but most people do not respond to anger and the feeling of being looked down upon so it seems that it would be much better to try and convince someone by presenting yourself as on the same level as the person you are trying to convince. This is rarely seen even among educated adults, who as these statistics show, can hardly bear to live near people of the opposing political party. This raises the question of why people can hardly ever seem to peacefully discuss politics? If you were a real estate agent trying to persuade your clients to buy a house, you would not start by screaming at them about how horrible, disgusting and stupid their current house was and then in a pompous manner describe how this new house was all the better. So why do educated and involved adults take that approach when talking to their friends and colleagues about politics?

 

Brooks, Arthur C. “Bipartisanship Isn’t for Wimps, After All.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 09 Apr. 2016. Web. 11 Apr. 2016.

Washington Post CRQ

In the Washington Post Article, “Your reaction to this confusing headline reveals more about you than you know” by Ana Swanson, the line that called me from the page was, “Getting hitched might seem like an odd reaction to a disaster. But in an uncertain time, these couples found something stable in each other. As psychological studies show, uncertainty triggers a deep craving in all of us for stability, and that can motivate people to do strange things.” This called me from the page because it reminded me of a memory I had forgotten. When I was in the eleventh grade on a normal Tuesday at school, I was watching the clock and counting down the last five minutes before the bell rang to go home. That day I didn’t hear the bell because I was being ushered out of the three story school building along with thousands of other scared students because we were under lock down. We had no idea if it was a drill or an actual emergency until we saw the looks of panic on our teachers faces and knew it was not a drill and our lives were at risk. We stood in the stadium bleachers for three hours while waves of panic and unsure thoughts about the future came over us. We ended up being fine and it was just a precaution because there had been a devastating shooting at a community college down the road. I will never forget the thoughts that I kept inside about the things I had wished I had done when I thought my life was in danger or the things that my classmates and I discussed, things that they had wished they had done, while we waited, unsure when we were going to be let out of those stands. “Several studies suggest that natural disasters, including Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and the Japanese tsunami in 2011, led to a spike in marriages or divorces — both of which are a form of certainty, Holmes says” This reaction to consider the things that have been left undone and then wanting to do something crazy after a stressful, life threatening situation, according to this article are totally normal. I was amazed that these people actually went through with these crazy thoughts until I remembered the things I had thought of when my life was threatened and realized that it wasn’t so crazy after all. In this article I also realized that I am someone who is inclined to search for closure and that that could be one of the reasons why in stressful situations I think about the end of my life and regrets I have. Although I did not always agree with the political views of the “closure minded people,” I do agree that I am the “type of person who likes to make plans and avoid surprises.” I found it fascinated that the conclusions the mind jumps to could be the wrong ones and that they could survey our surroundings and still make a faulty conclusion. I also think of myself as a very creative person and was fascinated to learn that “wading through confusion is part of the creative process” because wading through confusing to me feels stressful and the opposite of creative. This article fascinated me but made me wonder why our brains, when faced with stressful situations, would trick us and amplify our stress filling our heads with regrets and the worst possible outcomes, instead of calming us when we needed it?

Works Cited:
Swanson, Ana. “Your Reaction to This Confusing Headline Reveals More about You than You Know.” Washington Post. The Washington Post, n.d. Web. 04 Apr. 2016.

Brain CRQ

This article written by Barbara K. Lipska, a neuroscientist and the director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health, was unlike any of the other articles that I have read in this class and was very compelling a little scary to think about. What called me from the page was the following, “The M.R.I. scan later that day showed that I indeed had a small brain tumor that was bleeding and blocking my right visual field. I was told it was metastatic melanoma and given what was, in effect, a death sentence. I was a scientist, a triathlete, a wife, mother and grandmother. Then one day my hand vanished, and it was over.” This was a shocking revelation that all of a sudden you could one day not be okay. The thought of my brain being taken over by “tumors, inflammation and severe swelling” causing me to not even be able to see limbs of my body was chilling. Lipska’s piece is so dark and yet is written in the lightest almost playful tone that makes the subject matter easier to swallow. The way she describes, so matter of factly, the strange things that her condition made her do make them almost funny rather then scary for example, “I got lost driving home from work on a route I had taken for decades. I went running in the woods outside my house, barely dressed.” The most alarming part of the article was what I read between the lines. This very highly educated woman, who daily worked with people dealing with mental illness, studying the signs of onset, treatment and symptoms, did not know until almost too late that she was suffering from a nearly fatal condition in her brain. Surley, I thought, she would be familiar with signs of something wrong and take them seriously but instead her thought process was a lot like what I assume mine would be. “I had battled breast cancer in 2009 and melanoma in 2012, but I had never considered the possibility of a brain tumor. I knew immediately that this was the most logical explanation for my symptoms, and yet I quickly dismissed the thought. Instead I headed to a conference room.” The question that this article raised to me was not about the symptoms and effects of her conditions, although those were terrifying, but it is if this highly educated woman did not know about a condition in her body in a region in which she specialized, then how would someone like me know if something were fatally wrong with my body?

Apple Case CRQ

This article is locked and loaded with information and statistics hitting you within seconds of the last fact. As a child of Generation Z, hardly remembering a time with a dial up connection, security breaches on our security blankets a.k.a. phones and laptops, are terrifying and and close to unfathomable. The Apple Case is a scary thought for most people who, like I am are touching an Apple product more hours in the day then not; but, what called me from this article was not a statistic but a quote from Chris Soghoian, the principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union. “The court left open the door to surveillance as long as the primary function of the device was intact. So as long as Amazon Echo can tell you what temperature it is or can still play music, that case seems to suggest that the government might be able to force Amazon to spy on you.” Mr. Soghoian’s words were used as main examples of government technological invasion in the past but this particular quote was intriguing, and a little alarming, because it talks about future or present privacy invasion in our homes that we are unaware of masked as a cool new gadget. The gadget to which he is referring is basically a personal home assistant that looks like a speaker. By calling out “her” name “Alexa!” she turns on and answers your questions such as what the weather is, how bad traffic is or can even order your morning coffee or five o’clock cocktail (Manjoo 15). Of course this gadget is cool, its basically one of the next steps to having robots do our laundry, which I thought we would have by now anyway. What is scary is when this “helpful” device becomes dangerous, just like the possibility of smartphone being able to be accessed by the government. If Apple does not stand their ground with this case, our iPhones and Apple products may become something we have to live without. With the release with the next new technological advance instead of being excited, we would be scared and disappointed that the government had to go and ruin a good thing. Even though the Amazon Echo is probably not listening to our conversations within our home, the fact that it is even a possibility, and a growing possibility in the world today, is so wrong. Unfortunately, we can not have the best of both worlds in this situation. The government can not have the tools they need to get one step closer to tracking and shutting down the organization that killed countless American citizens that day in San Bernardino if Apple chooses not to give up their privacy fight. But, if Apple were to give up their privacy fight, our technology would become another terrorist in this already scary world. Instead of getting excited about a new technology, we are worried that it can hear us or data mine us but when did the feelings of paranoia sweep the nation, and why did they?

Works Cited:

Manjoo, Farhad. “The Apple Case Will Grope Its Way Into Your Future.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 24 Feb. 2016. Web. 29 Feb. 2016.

Equality CRQ

This author and I had more in common then I expected. This whole piece was so compelling to me because I saw similarities, shocking statistics and learned so much but what really called out to me was when the author was talking about something someone said to her before she started work as a fire-woman, “What I didn’t expect was the question I heard more than any other: “Aren’t you scared?” It was strange — and insulting — to have my courage doubted. I never heard my male colleagues asked this. Apparently, fear is expected of women.” Growing up, I was the only girl in my family of sixteen cousins. There were times when I noticed differences, like when we were out in the woods and I had to go back to the house to use the restroom and they didn’t or my aunt not wanting me to play tackle football with my cousin twice my size. Like the author, “I got a few stitches, and kept biking and sledding. Misadventures meant that I should try again. With each triumph over fear and physical adversity, I gained confidence.” (Paul) In hindsight, the things that my parents held me back on, were always for my safety and I can not remember a time when they didn’t let me do something that wasn’t for that reason. However, if there had been an instance like that, my mom still would not hear the end of it. I am thankful for the sheer fact that my parents let me play the way I wanted to. I think that is part of the reason why today I have very little problems with being intimidated by challenges and am the most independent person out of my friend group almost always. Not because I am smarter then they are or more talented or a better person, but because I grew up with a freedom of expression and gender equality all around me that I carry with me every day. Unfortunately not every girl is raised like this and “According to a study in The Journal of Pediatric Psychology last year, parents are “four times more likely to tell girls than boys to be more careful” after mishaps that are not life-threatening but do entail a trip to the emergency room.” (Paul) It is okay for anyone to be scared, and for the author to be scared to start working at a dangerous job. What is not okay is when the courage of a woman is doubted and a man is called a hero for doing the same job. Why as a society are women expected to be scared of daunting challenges or more hands on jobs, and what does that say about the men who are shamed for being afraid of the same things?

Works cited:
Paul, Caroline. “Why Do We Teach Girls That It’s Cute to Be Scared?” The New York Times. The New York Times, 20 Feb. 2016. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.

Stealing from Strippers

This article was really interesting to me for many different reasons. It was refreshing to read an op-ed piece and a piece that didn’t have to do with politics or the upcoming election. I love personal pieces and this one was really interesting because other then the occasional feature on a Law and Order episode, I do not know much about stripping or “exotic dancing.” The lines that really called me from the page were, “Relegated to the fringes of the workplace, in part because of stigmas surrounding sex work, we are invisible. Clubs force us to work as “independent contractors.” We have no health insurance, workers’ compensation or other benefits. We have zero security.” I had always thought of stripping as a job, not a career, that people fell into because they were out of options. I never thought of it as something that someone did for 23 years like the author of this piece. I was right in that, according to the author, “Various circumstances have led dancers to places like this: lack of education or work experience, singlemotherhood, no child support or college-bound kids. Alcoholism, abusive boyfriends, student loans and car payments.” However, she says places and not the career itself and that really had me wondering if the career itself was by choice or done for the reasons she mentioned or if it were the venues that were chosen for those motivations. I was really astonished to learn that these workers have no benefits whatsoever. From what I have learned stripping is not the safest or secure job, the author even mentioned an instance where they were filmed and worried their images may end up on the internet, and to be reporting to work with no guarantees of help if anything ever went wrong, like in the example she gave, just does not sound right. This example did inspire the change that was the case that led to “one of the first unions in this country to cover workers in the sex trade.” I was really struggling to understand this line of work as anything but a performance based line of work so I decided to compare it to being a professional back up dancer. According to some research I did, “Backup dancing is irregular work, with a median pay rate of around $13 an hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Keep in mind that this high-intensity, physical job doesn’t often include benefits like sick time or health insurance” (Starr 1). So similar to strippers, if a backup dancer were to be injured before a show, say they were on a concert tour preforming 4-5 nights a week, they would not be covered by the show, provided no sick days and not making money for the days they don’t preform. Although this example may seem weak, it helped me to understand a little better why this would be upsetting to a dancer of any kind. It should not matter what line of work you are in, sex trade or stock trade, you should be provided basic benefits and promised basic security when you show up for work. What I could not understand was that since that is not the case, If this line of work is indeed a last ditch option, then shouldn’t it serve is a placeholder to get back on your feet and find a new job with benefits? Why would you stay at an unsafe, unsavory job with no safety and security for 20 plus years?

 

Works Cited:

Starr, Gigi. “The Average Salary of Backup Dancers.” EHow. Demand Media, n.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2016.

Shitty First Drafts

I loved this excerpt by Anne Lamott from Bird by Bird because I felt like every line called me from the page due to the fact that every feeling she described was something I had felt when writing. Her advice when first writing to “Just get it all down on paper because there may be something great in those six crazy pages that you would never have gotten to by more rational, grown-up means” (Lamott Para 6). Her continuance on the topic, “[t]here may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you just love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you’re supposed to be writing about, more or less, or in what direction you might go — but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages” was the best writing advice I have ever seen and could not be more true (Lamott Para 6). I am not a math person; I have always been more interested in learning that had to do with writing or reading. However, that does not mean that writing has ever come easy to me. The way Lamott described her writing process of emotions are the same feelings that I have felt basically every time I have ever written something. Feelings of: despair, self-doubt, and eventually, more like hopefully, feeling satisfied with what I had written. Unlike the author I have never written as my job and really can not imagine my feelings if my salary depended on the sentences I could put together. This article reminded me of any time I’ve ever had to write about myself. I could write a one-thousand-page paper reciting facts, research and information in the blink of an eye, but when it comes to writing about my self, I might be able to write one page of crap in the same amount of time. I love the way she so eloquently put that in my one page of crap, or possibly more if I haven’t given up, I could find the meaning and inspiration for the final, wonderful draft because that is the reason I prefer to write. Instead of solving a math problem that has one answer that everyone else doing the problem will come to, when I write the “answer” is what I come up with and what I find during my creative process. Is it because writing is so much more personal then solving a math problem that we sometimes feel insecure about sharing our writing or even just at the thought of sharing it?