Dream a Little Dream of Me

Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today. -James Dean

Another renowned poet that I have yet to share with my fellow bloggers is Langston Hughes. The first time I became familiar with the work of Langston Hughes was during a poetry unit sophomore year. My class analyzed his poem “Theme for English B” and I found his work to be very refreshing and different than the other works we had read. He is probably one of the most renowned black poets for his time. Not only did he work magic when writing he was one of the first poets to experiment with jazz poetry. I was looking through an archive of his works and found this very pleasant poem called “Dreams.”

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

Though it is a fairly short poem it manages to hold a lot of meaning in its words about dreaming. Langston Hughes was also a very technical writer and poet. This poem reads so easily because of his ability to take technical skill and create an easy flow in his poetry. In this essay Langston Hughes describes the importance of dreams and that you must dream or your life will have no meaning and you might as well be dead if your life has no meaning. Hughes uses two very interesting analogies to represent a life with no dreams; he relates not holding tight to your dreams to a bird that cannot fly and frozen dirt laden with snow. Using both of the analogies, it can be stated that Langston believes that a person’s dreams are what give people the urge to live and without them people have nothing to pull themselves up from whatever mess they were given. I think this message is easy to understand when you look back on Langston Hughes childhood which was not very easy for him but he obviously managed to come out of the mess and become a successful poet that was influenced by the troubles of his early childhood.

Health Care

At their core, Americans all want the same basic things: a quality education for their children, a good job so they can provide for their families, healthcare and affordable prescription drugs, security during retirement, a strongly equipped military and national security. -Ruben Hinojosa

Everyone knows about President Obama’s push for universal health care in the United States. He has given several of speeches about the need for a reform in our health care system and he intends to get one. Personally, I have always feared this idea because of problems that have been heard from other countries taking on health care. When it comes to get everyone in a country adequate health care it seems to me like an impossible task. There are so many problems that come with reforming the health care system. The first major problem is financial. How is our government supposed to pay for everyone to get the proper help they need from doctors. Our national debt is all ready through the roof and adding the burden of providing health care would just add to the debt even more. Right now, people receive health care through their employers. I understand that this is not the best, especially with so many people unemployed, but it is what the country can truly handle at this moment. Are priority should be somehow figuring out how to pay for such an extreme project and get some funding before trying to pass bills in congress that would get to this new health care system. Another issue is if this new health care system is what we really want or need as a people. Think about it for a moment, if you knew the government was providing free health care for you, you would likely go to the doctor for every little sickness because you don’t have to care about paying for it. With everyone having this same mindset the hospitals, doctors would become overwhelmed by patients, become understaffed, under resourced and the overall ability of our health care system would halt. I recently became very ill and my mom decided to take me to a walk-in clinic. We had tried to get an appointment with our family doctor but there were no opening. My family had gotten really concerned because I had been getting increasingly sick. By the time we headed out for the clinic my fever had reached 104 degrees Fahrenheit which is fairly dangerous. My mom called in to the walk-in clinic hoping that I would be seen as soon as I got there, because of my increasing fever. When we got there the waiting area was very crowded and we sat down and waited for my name to be called. I was still very sick because of the fever and decided to lie down along a couple of the chairs and try and get comfortable. Even after calling in early and being probably the sickest person in the waiting room, I had to wait forty-five minutes to be seen by a doctor. Afterwards I was thinking to myself, if we have a health care reform like President Obama wants, who knows how much longer it would have taken them to see me. By the time they did see me my temperature had increased to 104.5 degrees Fahrenheit. We as a nation are in the middle of a health scare with H1N1 virus all over the place and so more people are going in and getting checked for Swine Flu already putting the hospitals and medical centers on the edge. If everyone in the nation had health care and felt the need to get checked out for the flu or a virus that is spreading all over, our medical centers probably would be unable to function properly and there would be even longer waits to be checked or be seen by a doctor even if you were extremely sick like I was this past week. If we do end up having a health care reform the first thing we need to do is make sure that we have not only the financial resources but the medical resources prepared well enough for an increase in patients because that is inevitably what will happen. I would rather stick with the health care system we have, as messed up as it may be, and be able to be seen by a doctor in a decent amount of time when I am truly ill than have to wait around slowly dying to be seen by a doctor who is exhausted and expended on an overflow of patients that he can barely do his job.

Words, Words, Words...Alive and Well

Have the courage to live. Anyone can die. -Robert Cody

I was searching through a website where I find my Emily Dickinson poems. It has this index of the first lines of each poem. As I was searching for a poem to dicuss in my last blog for the week, I saw the first line of the poem this entry is about and I laughed. "A word is dead." seems like such an unusual topic for a poem that I found myself wondering what makes a word dead. Read what Emily Dickinson's thoughts are on the situation:

A WORD is dead.
When it is said,
Some say.

I say it just
Begins to live
That day.

Before I read this poem I thought to myself for a moment what I thought about a word being dead. I came up with dead languages such as Latin and so I came to the conclusion that a dead word would be a word that had dropped out of the use of the population. According to Emily Dickinson most people think a word is dead when it is first said but she believed that is the day that it begins just to live. I then realized that Emily Dickinson was trying to convey that words were not just a combination of vowels and consonants but have actual meaning and their meanings also give them a life source. Words are living beasts that surround our society which is one hundred percent true. People use words with purposes of hurting, loving, appreciating, criticizing, or informing. It is a new way of looking at words and is actually really thought provoking. Words are given their purpose by the person but they then hold onto that purpose. People give them purpose and life and then sustain it.

And the Noble Peace prize goes to.....

It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright. -Benjamin Franklin

It has been brought to everyone’s attention that President Barrack Obama has been named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and it has also become a major debate on whether he was truly deserving of such an award. Well today I woke up and turned on the television only to watch a show called Fox news Sunday that was discussing this very topic. A panel of political analysts seemed to all be in agreement that President Barrack Obama did not truthfully win the award on his own actions but none of them agreed upon how the situation should be handled. It is not wrong to say that the Bush’s Administration was not well liked by the Nobel committee and most of Europe. One of the panelists said the committee had made it clear in previous years that they would not award the Nobel peace prize to anyone who had made accomplishments that dealt with 9/11 and Iraq because they did not believe those accomplishments commendable for the award because of the controversy that came with the topics. I searched for this information online but could not find a direct statement from the committee saying such but that is partly because the online community is at a major buzz over President Obama receiving the award. I went to the Fox News Sunday website and noticed a poll off to the side that asked people how they felt about President Obama winning the award and the majority of the votes went to the choice of someone else deserved it more. I think the public as a whole does not believe that this decision by the committee made much sense. This award is given to people who are to be commended for their accomplishments and Obama has yet to really accomplish anything. I will admit that the man is a very eloquent speaker and knows how to inspire people through his words but that is no reason to give him a Nobel Peace prize. I do not wish to relate President Obama to a con artist but every time I hear someone talk about how amazing President Obama is at speaking part of me thinks back to how con artists can only be successful if they have the same eloquence in voice as our President yet they are never going to be given any awards for their speaking abilities because it is frowned upon. Another issue the panel explained was that the list of names in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize had to be registered by February 1, 2009. President Obama was sworn into office on January 20, 2009 had he really done anything substantial to get his name on that list a mere 12 days after becoming president? I think not and I do believe that the only reason that President Obama received the award is because he was not Bush. The first few days in office President Obama spent the majority of his time undoing a lot of what Bush had done in his eight years and Europe had become so Anti-Bush that they saw Obama’s work as Nobel Peace prize worthy. A few of the panelists chose to see this as the reason for President Obama receiving the award and some of the more extremists on the panel saw it as an award of Anti-Americanism and thought Obama should politely decline the award. I am not saying that he should truly go that far and I am sure he will not but it brings up a good point, what should be done with the money that comes with the award and how does Obama view this award. Well I believe the money should go directly to the countries debt amounts that Obama insists on multiplying and President Obama says that he sees this award as a promise to complete what he has set out to complete. The problem with that belief is that many people believe that he should have already accomplished what he set out to accomplish to receive the award because the recipients of the Nobel Peace prize had already made their accomplishments to society before winning, not just made promises to accomplish it. I do find it somewhat reassuring that Obama does not feel that he truly deserves this award either because I would be slightly disturbed about America’s future if he thought so. Let us hope this award does not go to his head. Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., Jimmy Carter and now Barrack Obama, oh dear oh my.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/10/09/nobel.peace.prize/index.html

http://fns.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/10/09/wallace-unplugged-obama%e2%80%99s-peace-prize/

The Winter Skyscape

God's promises are like the stars; the darker the night the brighter they shine. -David Nicholas

This weekend we had our first snowfall, though none of the snow actually stuck to the ground it was kind of a wakeup call that winter is coming early this year. Now most people relate the snow and winter to cold and depression, but I love the winter. First of all, the nights are longer in the winter which gives you a longer time to just lay beneath the stars and the moon and reflect upon anything and, secondly, snow is this amazing thing that coats the world and turns everything white which just reminds me of purity and letting go of the world because everything is lost in the snow. I find winter to be this very refreshing and enlightening period of the year. Well it is not a surprise that I went searching for a poem about the night sky and snowfall. So I wasn’t surprised to find one by Robert Frost. “Stars” by Robert Frost is a poem that describes the night sky after a snowfall and just how beautiful it is in that moment. Frost paints this landscape in your minds of everything covered in a new and glorious snow that seems to coexist with these bright, meaningful stars that seem so much more exuberant above the snowfall. He tells about how the night is at this ominous peace and a type of rest that leaves at dawn’s break. In the last stanza, Frost describes the stars as so snowy white and relates them back to Minerva, the Roman Goddess of wisdom. In essence his starts to relate the stars to a blind wisdom which is very interesting because it shows that he too believes that the stars are this symbol of enlightenment and power source for pondering through our problems and souls. I think that the stars have always had this symbol since the age of enlightenment when the philosophers and astronomers were so busy looking for answers in the sky and it is really mind blowing how much information the stars give us as a people whether it is just the empowering symbol they provide some or it is actually information about what else lies in this universe, the stars are always there to be versed about.

http://www.ketzle.com/frost/stars.htm

The Tempting Fruit

"Tis one thng to be tempted, another to fall." William Shakespeare

Temptation can be one of the hardest things man must overcome and man is often placed in situations where the temptation seems to great to resist. I decided to break away from the love poems for a time and step into temptation…at least a poem about temptation. Emily Dickinson described temptation best in her poem “Forbidden fruit a flavor has”. It is a one stanza poem which means it is fairly short so I decided I would simply copy and paste it into my entry rather than give you the link like I would normally do.

FORBIDDEN fruit a flavor has

That lawful orchards mocks;

How luscious lies the pea within

The pod that Duty locks!

Emily Dickinson chose a topic that people have dealt with from the beginning of man in this poem, temptation. One would assume that Emily Dickinson purposefully gave this piece religious connotation by referring to forbidden fruit. Forbidden fruit are referred to from the Bible, when Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit and are later expelled from the Garden of Eden because they admit to God that they had eaten the fruit he has forbidden them from eating. Temptation has several meanings when referring to religion such as in Dickinson’s poem. It can mean committing a sin such a lying all the way to sinning through murder. Resisting temptation in modern day is related back to honoring a bond or relationship you have with another being and not cheating or deceiving this person. Unfortunately, temptation has grown in modern world and many find it hard to resist by remaining faithful which is cause for the failure of far too many relationships. Emily Dickinson died in 1886 in older times when temptation was not so easily taken in so it is curious to think about how she would she the world today seeing this poem was written over one hundred years ago. Is it possible that people has lost the will power that many used to have and cheat and lie making marriage no longer a lasting union for many. It is disheartening to hear that about only 50% of marriages in modern day are a success. At that frightening rate one of every two marriages fail which really brings a damper on the whole point of marriage. It makes me wonder why we have let marriage success rates drop so enormously and what the cause is. It is something to think about, has temptation become too hard to resist or have people lost their willpower to resist it?

Congrats Rio de Janeiro!

“Olympics—A lifetime of training for just ten seconds.” –Jesse Owens
Congratulations are in order for Rio de Janeiro for winning the Olympic bid for the 2016 Olympics. It will be the first time that the Olympics will be hosted by a South American country so there was some great pride associated with this win. While most people were rejoicing this great feat, the people of Chicago were speechless by the outcome. Chicago had often been considered the likely host for the 2016 Olympics but was actually the first voted out of the bid. This came as a great disappointing shock to the city last Friday and many still do not understand fully what happened. Rumors have actually leaked that the Olympic committee actually voted Chicago out first because of bruised pride. Now here is where the politics comes into play. President Obama and his wife, Michelle, flew to Copenhagen, where the vote was held, and gave speeches to the committee asking them to select Chicago for 2016 Olympics hoping that the gesture would put Chicago far enough ahead of the other cities that it would be the obvious candidate. This tactic might have worked, if the Obamas would have stayed in Copenhagen for the vote and watched Chicago advance throughout the rounds of voting. Instead the Obamas, after giving their speeches about why Chicago deserved to host the 2016 Olympics, jumped onto a plane and left before even the first round of voting commenced. This move is said to have insulted the committee because it made their speeches feel too political rather than a kind gesture. This was what some cried out yet I still believe that is not exactly the truth. Chicago was followed by Tokyo in being dropped from the race which makes since because both cities are from countries that have hosted the Olympics in more recent years. Obama was not the only political leader who has spent time persuading IOC members to vote for his country. Luiz Silva, President of Brazil, has spent the past few months traveling the world to talk with IOC members and influencers about how Rio de Janeiro needed the 2016 Olympics while the other cities merely wanted it. When he heard that Obama was to make a speech before the IOC members he was actually convinced of a defeat, but his pleas obviously helped Brazil receive the host position and on confirming his victory for Brazil he was brought to tears. Now that is the showing of someone who truly deserves to host the 2016 Olympics and I raise my glass to him. BRAVO!! President Obama has made a statement about Chicago’s defeat and it contained the clique phrase ‘you win some and you lose some’ but that is not of importance anymore because there is nothing that can be done to change the IOC’s decision. Congrats BRAZIL!!!!

http://news.aol.com/article/rio-de-janeiro-picked-for-2016-olympics/700048?icid=mainhp-laptopdl1link3http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Frio-de-janeiro-picked-for-2016-olympics%2F700048#