High School

 High school flies by faster than anyone could ever have guessed. Weeks go by, as weekends seem to abut each other. Days morph into one long stretch of time that seems to have no beginning and no end. Only a few weeks into school and it feels like you have been there for months; soon enough you have been there for months and now the bell has taken its last toll. You look back and wonder where did all that time go? High school, the shortest four years of your life.      
 

Life

Life. Life is something amazing, beautiful, so remarkable that it invigorates you. Life is the warm midnight air on summers eve. Life is the growing of vegetation on a spring day. Life is the winter wind atop of the world's highest peak. Life is the leaf, floating... Floating... Floating downward, its decent to the cold autumn ground. Life is everywhere. Life is in the rolling plains of the countryside, in the busy streets of the city, in the endless oceans, and even in the countless stars. Life is out there waiting for us to find it. Waiting for us to become inspired, for life is better than our wildest dreams. The midnight rides on a lonely road in New England, with the windows down and the wind blowing through my hair, invigorates me. It gives me life. It brings me closer to life so that I may see its secrets... Life. You must find life so that it can inspire and invigorate you, so you can discover its secrets and show them to the world. For life is beautiful, and must never be wasted. 

Jewish Mourning

 



The Jews believe that the day of death is of much greater importance than the day of birth. This is because the day of death for a person is the culminating moment for their mission in life. The Jews call the time when our soul leaves our body yetziat. They also believe that the soul does not leave this world until the burying. (I guess ghosts are just people who were never buried) Autopsy, embalming, displaying the body, and cremation all violate Jewish respect for the dignity of the human body.

The Burial of the body must occur as soon as possible to preserve the integrity of the human body. In Jewish belief when we rise from the dead our bodies will be made of the earth in which we were buried. The burial of the body is preceded by the Taharah and the Levayah. The Taharah is when the body is cleaned, groomed, and water is poured over it in a ritual. After this is done the body is dressed in special white clothes called tachrichim, which signifies purity and holiness. The Levayah is the procession of the body to its final resting place. Mourning between death and burial should be spent praying for the soul because it is stuck between two worlds.

After burial is the Shivah. The Shivah is a seven daylong mourning period for first-degree relatives of the deceased. The first-degree relatives gather in the home of the deceased and mourn their death. During this time period many of the relatives will wear keriahs. Shivah literally means seven and originated when Joseph mourned the death of his father, Jacob, for seven days. (Genesis 50: 1-14) The day of the funeral is the first day of Shivah. The seudat havra’ah is the first meal after the funeral and is usually supplied by neighbors and friends.

During Shivah the relatives cannot wash their body, shave, look in mirrors, have sexual relations, and study the Torah. The relatives must sit in low stools or on the floor to represent that grief has brought them down. Relatives do not return to work until Shivah has ended. Visitors are allowed and greatly welcomed to come to the house and share in the mourning for the deceased. They are to stay quiet unless conversation is started by one of the relatives, in which they should normally only talk about the deceased. Jewish visitors are supposed to bring food for the family out of respect. The end of Shivah signals the end of the traditional mourning period. I watched a Shivah in a show called Weeds.

A secular funeral consists of an explanation of the ceremony, poetry or prose readings, a tribute to the deceased, reflection, and a few words of farewell. Non-religious people can choose anyway of honoring the body. They can have the body cremated, buried, dropped in the ocean, put in space, cremated then thrown anywhere in the world, they can literally have anything legal done to their body because they have no religion, which means no restrictions, rules, or beliefs on death. Mourning for a person without a religion can take any shape or form because it does not matter, they have no religion. Mourning to those who have no religion can be very diverse. Those who do believe in afterlife might pray or think about the deceased while those who do not believe in the afterlife might do nothing. Most normally try to put a religious spin on the funeral because somewhere in their ancestry, someone was religious.
 

Pope Francis’s Homily at Easter Vigil Summary

            

Pope Francis starts off his homily by talking about how the disciples were with Jesus to the very end, and since they had shared so much with Jesus they were very stricken with grief. Pope Francis then goes on to talk about how the women had so much love for Jesus that they went to his tomb and found it empty. This was something new and unexpected in their lives, and situation like this arise in our everyday life, especially religious ones. They make us fearful and have to come out of our normal routine, and God is always surprising us with new things in our life. Some might be good and some might be bad, but there is always a reason for everything.

Pope Francis then says that we must embrace the newness that God gives us. We must never get too down on ourselves, we must always keep our head up and keep trooping because there are no situations God cannot change and no sin to severe for God to forgive. Pope Francis goes back to talking about the gospel and how the two angels told the women that Jesus had risen from the dead. Jesus’ death had now turned into an event, an event that would change these women’s lives forever. It would also change all of humankind forever.

Jesus no longer belongs to the past but is part of the present; he is the ever lasting “today” of God. The newness of God that was presented to the women, and to all of humanity, is that Jesus won a victory over death, sin, evil, and everything that degrades humanity. Pope Francis calls daily problems that wrap us up in bitterness and sadness the evils of today in which death lives. Pope Francis then goes on to tell us that we must trust in Jesus; let him enter our life because he is life. If we have kept Jesus at a distance now is the time to accept him as our friend, our savior, our God. We must have faith and trust in him because he is close to us at all times.

The women who met the angles responded to their message with fear. The angels told them to remember what Jesus had told them when he was still in Galilee. Remembering everything Jesus had done and said during their time with him gave the women the confidence and faith to bring the message of the angels to the rest of the apostles. For us remembering everything God has done in our lives will help us open our hearts to the future, we must always remember the things God has done for us. Pope Francis ended his homily by reminding us to “not look among the dead for the Living One.” 

 Pope Francis is doing a lot of risky things that are causing the Swiss Guard a lot of headaches. He is going out into the people and sharing the message of God, which can be quite risky because there are a lot of people that want the pope dead. Pope Francis is a very humble man and I believe that his humbleness can teach everyone around the world to really help the poor and live more simply. Pope Francis also stresses that we must work for peace in the world and he also supports women in the church. The Pope’s main mission is that we must come back to the church and urge other Catholics back too. This is an important mission because many people have moved away from church, especially young people.

FDR's First Fireside Chat: The Bank Crisis

On October 29th of 1929 the stock market crashed, beginning the Great Depression, which would eventually spread worldwide and would last for around ten years. President Hoover was in office at the time and urged banks to form a consortium called the National Credit Corporation. He also created many Acts to try and pull America out of the economic depression but none worked and some even made the depression worse. FDR was elected president in 1933 and shortly after entering into office, the Dust Bowl crisis started. The Dust Bowl was a period of time in the Midwest where there was extreme drought and many dust storms. These dust storms were caused by poor crop circulation and other factors but they caused the land to be useless for crops. Many banks kicked off the tenants of their land to save money, so now there were more than 500,000 Americans homeless during this Great Depression. This was what FDR had to deal with in his first year of office. 

            FDR’s first Fireside Chat, he started the Fireside Chats, was about the bank crisis and how he and the government are trying to fix it. This chat was given only a few days after most of the public of the USA rushed to banks to take out their deposits and turn them into to currency or gold. The banks could not get enough currency to meet this demand because most of the deposits you put into the bank are invested into many different types of loans, which keep the economy and agriculture moving soundly. This rush caused many banks to have to sell assets at a much lower price than their real worth. This caused the wheels of the economy to slow down and as a result many banks closed down and FDR ordered a national bank holiday.

During this banking holiday, banks were getting reorganized and were getting the currency needed to meet the demands of the people. Banks in the twelve Federal Reserve bank cities that have been found to be “all right” by the Treasury would start opening the day after this chat. Smaller banks would start opening a few days afterwards. FDR then goes on to say that the state banks will be following the same course of recovery as the federal banks. He also reassures the people that when the bank opens they will be able to take care of all the peoples’ needs. FDR explains that the success of this program depends on the people. The people need to trust banks again and use them to safely store their money.

FDR explains that the reason of this bank holiday was to get banks to be more readily able to convert their assets to cash than before. FDR then goes on to talk about how the vast majority of banks were trustworthy with the peoples’ money but enough were not that it caused the people to distrust all banks. This problem was being fixed and banks were reopening once they were stable and approved by the Treasury. There were no losses that could be avoided, but on the whole some individual looses must be suffered. Together, the people must work with and have faith in the government so that the banking problem can be fixed, and then onto the greater challenge, the economic depression.

The American Creed and Belief System were subtlety implemented in this fireside chat in many ways.

“The success of our whole great national program depends, of course, upon the cooperation of the public -- on its intelligent support and use of a reliable system.” –FDR

Confidence of the people is a major part in the American Creed and Belief System. If the people do not have confidence in government then how can government work? The government is here to rule and protect us and if we do not trust it, then it will fail its job. Without our trust and confidence the government cannot run the country, so we, the people, have to trust in the government so it can do its job. 

The people of the 1930s lost confidence and trust in the banking system. This caused the banking system to need a total revamp because it could not provide for the people anymore. The government fixed the banking problem but it needed the people to trust banks again so that the banking system would take off again and thrive.

“I want to tell our citizens in every part of the Nation that the national Congress -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- showed by this action a devotion to public welfare and a realization of the emergency and the necessity for speed that it is difficult to match in our history.” –FDR

“It was the Government's job to straighten out this situation and do it as quickly as possible -- and the job is being performed.” –FDR

These quotes represent the idea that Democrats and Republicans alike must put differences aside and work for the better of the people. This is a major part of the American Creed and Belief system. FDR needed congress to come together and pass a law so that the banking system could be fixed, and they did just that. This quote also tells that the congressmen realized that their number one job was to cater to welfare of the people and to do it in a speedy fashion. 

“It was then that I issued the proclamation providing for the nation-wide bank holiday, and this was the first step in the Government's reconstruction of our financial and economic fabric.” –FDR

An American belief is that the people of the United States are generally afraid of a large government. Sometimes, though, a large government is needed. This was the case when the banking system failed. Although many people probably opposed it, like many people opposed the bank bailouts by Obama, the government fixing of the banks was needed and was the best option. It is the government’s job to come in and fix the economy in desperate situations because it is the government’s job to protect the people and letting the people slip into an economic depression is not protecting the people. 

“I can never be sufficiently grateful to the people for the loyal support they have given me in their acceptance of the judgment that has dictated our course, even though all of our processes may not have seemed clear to them.” –FDR

It is a part of the American Creed that we must trust and put our faith in our president even if he is of a different political party, for we are all Americans. We must trust that the president has a plan and can bring us out of whatever problem we are in. For if we do not trust him, he cannot put his plan into work and we will never get out of the problem. We as Americans must also trust our government even if we do not understand some of the things it does. Government is a very complex organization and it is hard for an normal citizen to fully understand everything about it, so that is why we have Senators and Representatives, people who know more about government and can therefore represent our beliefs in it. 

“Confidence and courage are the essentials of success in carrying out our plan. You people must have faith; you must not be stampeded by rumors or guesses. Let us unite in banishing fear. We have provided the machinery to restore our financial system; it is up to you to support and make it work. It is your problem no less than it is mine. Together we cannot fail.” –FDR

This quote from FDR embodies all the past ideas of the American Creed and Belief System mentioned before and puts an emphasis on unity. In uniting as one, we, the people of the United States, can make this banking system work again. The government cannot do it alone and the people of America cannot do it alone, and the people especially cannot do it alone if they themselves are not united. Only once the people of the USA are united as one can they unite with the government and solve this problem. We have a government by the people so the government cannot work without the help of the people.    

My 3 Favorite Artists

Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15^th, 1452. His father was a wealthy legal notary and his mother was a peasant. Leonardo lived with his mother for a few years then lived with his father who had married 4 times before having a legitimate child. Leonardo supposedly began his career as an artist when a local peasant made a shield and had Leonardo paint it. Leonardo painted such a scary looking monster on the shield that his father sold it to a Florentine art dealer and bought another shield for the peasant. The shield that Leonardo had painted was speculated to be sold to the Duke of Milan.

 Leonardo then worked in a workshop that helped produce many other famous artists of the time. Leonardo later traveled throughout Italy doing different types of work including painting, sculpture, and architecture. He also served as a military engineer and made maps for the army. Leonardo, in the later years of his life, created a walking lion that could also open up its chest to show a cluster of lilies. He died on May 2^nd, 1519 at the age of 67. Leonardo never married and only had two close friends that were women.

Leonardo was a painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. He was the definition of a renaissance man. He had a very inventive imagination and this lead to his successes in many fields. He is believed by some to be the best painter of all time and to be the most talented person to ever live. He invented many things that could not even be made during his time, such as a helicopter, a tank, parachute, and flying contraption. His paintings were very lifelike because of his study of the human body.

The Annunciation, The Baptism of Christ, Portrait of a Musician, and The Mona Lisa are some of Leonardo’s paintings. He also made a lot of advancements in biology and math, and he also invented many things. His paintings captured the elements of art and the principles of art but since many of his paintings were portraits there was not a lot of movement. Leonardo utilized form and shape by making the humans in his artworks look as real as possible. He did this by studying cadavers.

I find Leonardo da Vinci interesting because he is a renaissance man. He wasn’t just an artist; he was about everything you possibly could be. His artwork was also the best of his time and the renaissance is my favorite time period for art. My artwork is like his in that I try to make mine look exactly as it does in real life. I also do not want to just be an artist when I grow up; I also want to do many other things that involve art. I have not done many paintings so I cannot really compare my paintings to his.

 

Pablo Picasso was born on October 25^th, 1881. His baptism name is Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Crispiniano de la Santísima Trinidad. Pablo’s father was a painter and worked as an art teacher at many different places. Their family moved all over Spain. Pablo did not like formal education and left school at the age of 16.

Pablo moved to France where he lived with a friend and had to burn many of his works to keep warm. Pablo and his anarchist friend created a magazine titled Young Art, in which Pablo published art depicting the terrible condition of the poor. Pablo became famous while he was young and married a ballerina that he was designing a ballet for her troupe. They had a son name Paulo who became a motorcycle racer at a young age. Pablo and his wife did not get along and separated later in life. They did not get divorced because Pablo did not want his wife to get half his wealth.

Once his wife died he openly dated a woman, whom he had been having an affair with, and fathered a child with her. She wanted to get married to him so badly that four years after his death, she committed suicide. Pablo stayed in France during the Second World War but did not exhibit any artwork because his style was not in line with the Nazi’s. Pablo painted in private at home and used bronze casting smuggled to him by the French Resistance. During this time he started writing poetry as another outlet for his emotions.

At the age of 63 Pablo began to have an affair with a woman who bore two more of his children. Pablo had many mistresses at a time, most of them much younger than he. The girl that had his two of his children was 40 years younger than he. He had another lover later in life, at the age of 70, who was only 19 years old. He began to realize his old age and love for young women, and started painting ugly old dwarfs with lovely young women. Pablo died on April 8^th, 1973 at the age of 91.     

Pablo Picasso was a main founder of the Cubist movement. Cubist paintings have angular shapes and a very imaginative aspect to them. They are what the artist sees with emotion put in it, not just a reprint of image. I find Pablo Picasso interesting because Cubist painting is so different than what I do. I could never really do what he does as art because my art has to look very realistic. His art has a lot of pattern, rhythm, contrast, variety, unity, and many different shapes.

       

            Claude Monet was born on November 4^th, 1840. Monet visited several countries and painted in each city. He painted at the Louvre. He also joined the army but got out because he went to an art school to finish his studying. Finishing up his studies he met other painters who shared his new approach to art. Together they started the impressionism movement.

            Impressionism was not appreciated at the time of its beginning because it did not resemble real life and did not follow the traditional paintings of royalty, religious, and portraits. Impressionism had more to do with landscapes and artwork of nature with emotion and the artist’s vision put in them. Impressionism is done by small and thin brush strokes. Impressionism also has an emphasis on light and how it changes, ordinary objects or people, movement, and unusually visual angles.

            Monet painted seascapes in England, trains, landscapes, scenes of people, relatives, a few portraits, and many paintings of his home at Giverny. He had a beautiful garden at Giverny that he painted many times. The garden had a stream going through it and a bridge over the stream, which he also painted. Monet also painted the rooms in his house vibrant colors, like blue, green, and yellow. Monet liked painting controlled nature, like the lilies in his garden, and he also painted up and down the Seine River.

            Monet had cataracts later in life, which made if paintings seem rather reddish. Once he had the cataracts removed he was said to have been able to see some ultraviolet wavelengths and that is why some of the paintings after the surgery had a bluish tint to them. Monet had two children of his own and his wife had 6 others. Monet died of lung cancer on December 5^th, 1926 at the age of 86. Monet wanted his funeral to be very simple, in like with his impressionistic views.

            I find Monet interesting because he also does a form of artwork that is much different than mine. Mine would more go in line with the traditional way of art. His paintings have a lot of pattern, rhythm, movement, contrast, harmony, color, and texture. Color was a main theme in his artwork because impressionism focused on light and the shades of things that it affected. I first learned a lot about Monet in the first quarter of French 4 Honors when we did a project on him, and became very interested in his way of art. I find art that is much different from mine very interesting, especially art that is heavily influenced by the artist’s emotion and perception.

The great Gatsby Review

The Great Gatsby, it is not just a title of a book. It sets a tone for the rest of the story, a tone of wonder and mystery. Magicians use great in their names so that they impose mystery, wonder, and awe in their audience. By putting “great” in their names, they make themselves higher up than everyone else. It is like being knighted by the Queen, except that great implies much more wonder than just sir. That is why Jay Gatsby is called the Great Gatsby; there is so much wonder and mystery about him.

  When first hearing the name of this book, a thought came to my mind. That thought was, “Who is this ‘Great Gatsby?’” I began to think immediately that this man was a very rich man, but not only a rich man, but also a mysterious man. I expected this Gatsby fellow to be an older man who was very unpredictable in his actions. I had this feeling that no one would know what this Gatsby did for a living, and that he might partake in illegal activities. I was partly right.

Jay Gatsby was a mysterious man. He comes to us in this story out of surprise. Nick was talking to a man that turned out to be Gatsby, but Gatsby never mentioned his name until Nick said how he still has yet to see this Gatsby. Jay Gatsby floats around his parties, partaking in a few conversations but mostly sticking to himself, which caused wonder about him because some people would not even know it, was him that they were talking to. He would walk around the party, a stranger to everyone yet the topic of many conversations. 

Gatsby was the sort of man that inspired wonder. He was a very young handsome man, who had come into a very large amount of money, and had been a major in the army. No one knew how Gatsby had come to get this money and so many rumors were made. These rumors added to Gatsby’s greatness. They added mystery and intrigue in his character, and they inspired wonder in those who heard them. People would hear the rumors about him and come to his parties to find out for themselves about this Gatsby man, to see what he was really about. Gatsby never denied or confirmed the rumors and so he only fed the fire that created and spread them.

Gatsby wanted this. He wanted to be a man of mystery and wonder in peoples’ eyes. He had created a new name for himself and a new life, and with this new life he could become anyone and anything, and so he left this up to the masses. He let them write his life story; he let them decide what he did for a living, and all the aspects of his life. The human imagination ran wild creating a story about this man, for humans cannot stand knowing nothing about someone, especially someone who is very prominent in the world.

The masses created stories about Gatsby; stories that inspired awe, respect, wonder, jealousy, mystery, and intrigue. No one knew if these stories were real or not, which caused Gatsby to be as much of a mystery as how a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat. This book is about a man whose life was surrounded by mystery, a man who had fueled this mystery so that he might find and impress a woman he had fallen in love with may years ago. She did not know much about him now, and so he was as much a mystery to her as he was to anyone of his guests. He was surrounded so much by rumors and mystery that when he died, almost no one came to his funeral.

 No one really knew much about him and he was such a mysterious man that no one really became close with him. There were only a few close friends that he had and even the truth about him was foggy to them. As far as the party goers went, Gatsby could have been a figure in their imagination, a man made up to satisfy their starving minds. As for his close friends, this mystery about Gatsby made it so their friendships could never become very deep. The Great Gatsby, a title for a man people knew nothing about, a man who could be anyone or do anything because his life story was built and alive in the minds of the masses. That is why this book is appropriately named The Great Gatsby.