Recent Activity

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  What can Homelessness do to Children

  To add to the bad things that homelessness can do to a child, on MTV yesterday was a True Life episode of I'm homeless and another episode of True Life I'm Poor. Both of these episodes were very enlightening in terms of what children learn and how they develop social skills. From the episode of True Life I'm Poor the oldest teen of a family felt pressured to drop out of school and take on a second job because his mother could not find work and they were unable to make ends meet. This is incredibly sad because he didnt want to drop out of school because he enjoyed the education and appreciated it as well as the social. Luckily he didn't have to but through this experience he learned that making ends meet or money in this sense is what is necessary to live a reasonable life. Now granted that is true in a sense however it is through education and his social support system that he would have the opportunities to better his life and hopefully make more money. Instead though his mother asked him to drop everything for them - a responsibility a 16 year old should never face.

  From True Life I'm homeless I witnessed various teens who were homeless ask for money on the side of streets and even sell themselves for various tasks to earn money. Now as hard as that was to watch the worst thing I felt was witnessing a boy who was supposedly the boyfriend to a fellow homeless girl ditch the girl because she complained to much. Not only was she younger than him but she had left home to be with him. Now she was two states away and without any support system or anyone as a general thing. This shows that as a homeless single person you learn that taking care of you and only you is your first priority. Even when he had someone to look out for as soon as she brought him down so to speak he left her. This teaches homeless children that community is unimportant and worse yet that you can accomplish more without help from others. This is obviously false because it is through others that he is making any sort of living. It is just frustrating to see young people already in sad situations get themselves deeper because they havent thought about it.

  Posted 16 Nov 09 in CST

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  Immigration...!!

  Although I still am hesitant about how I feel about immigration and the various policies about immigration status, I do agree with Denise that as many things in todays society the facts being presented are skewed. People do not do their own investigating. They believe what is told to them and thus only see and hear and thus believe what is told to them.

  In order to change the views of immigration as you would need to with changing views on the poor, people need to be presented uncensored facts. They need to educated in the facts that Denise presented for example that they do pay taxes, or that they are not here because the US provides them an easier life style. They most likely work harder here then they did in their home land. However the generations living today, even my grandparents although immigrated from Canada do not understand what immigrants of today are going through because they did not live through Ellis Island.

  However that being said, I do feel that although this nation was built on immigration things are different today then they were before. Maybe not in too many ways but enough that discussing immigration clearly causes emotions to flare up. The biggest difference for me today is that there is no formal immigration network like Ellis Island so not only are US citizens feeling violated and taken advantage of but the immigrants as Denise pointed out getting taken advantage of. I'm not saying reopening Ellis Island is the way but if there was an institution set up similar to customs where one could register and retain benefits faster and through a legal process I feel that the arguments against immigrants and hurting our economy or whatever would disappear and immigrants would feel more at home if you will. Any just thoughts.

  Posted 16 Nov 09 in CST

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  Rags to Riches Myths

  The Rags to Riches myth or the American Dream suggests that with enough hard work anyone can become the next fortune 500 millionaire. However as demonstrated by how many Americans live below the poverty line with two incomes then clearly the American Dream is not true or at least is not true for 95% of the American population. But this is not what is discussed. Instead it is discussed and even worse believed that those who don't change their economic status through hard work and budgets and other tricks to make ends meet then it is not the economy, or corporation, or poverty cycle that keeps them trapped it is them. This of course is NOT true. As said in class if the rags to riches story was true then when we made the list of "things you do control" vs "things you don't control" the things you dont control side would be empty. This is because in the upper classes it is believed that those living in poverty are lazy or unmotivated or unemployed. This stereotype trapping victims of poverty further perpetuates the devastating cycle. Similar to what Rebecca said in her forum titled A new kind of poverty, the victims of poverty have so much negativity thrown at them that in the end they decide to live up to the false beliefs of the upper class and stop working or looking towards crime instead of hard work. Unfortunately this of course causes more upper class negativity towards those stricken with poverty because they begin to believe that only those in poverty foster the idea that crime saves. In the end without demolishing the rags to riches myth and redefining the American Dream the upper class will continue to believe that poverty is choice based on an individuals work ethic versus the truth which is it is a sad position to be in but it is not just the fault of the individual, it can be affected by many factors.

  Posted 28 Oct 09 in CST

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  IVF clinics and their reliability

  Today in the news was a video clip explaining how a New Orleans clinic mis labeled and thus cannot account for over 100 embryos belonging to various families. http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=15790724&ch=4226713&src=news (this is the link to the abc news coverage of the mix up) Considering the Church believes the embryos to be persons, should the clinics put the eggs up for adoption or should they be destroyed. Being destroyed insures that no one gets someone else's child, but it also means that all the embryos go to waste when there are so many suffering from infertility. In my opinion the embryos should go up for adoption or purchase. With the money brought in the clinic can pay off the angry and now suing parents who lost their embryos. I know that selling or putting embryos up for adoption goes against the pro-choice side of abortion because it seems as if at conception it is a person so its murder to abort, but I feel like IVF and infertility are a whole separate matter. There are so many women, men and families that suffer from infertility and thus mis out on the opportunity to grow their family through children. I feel like the clinic should at least attempt to be less of a screw up by providing other infertile couples the opportunity to prosper from their mistake.

  Posted 28 Sep 09 in CST

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  Is Natural Family Planning so different from Birth Control?

  This past weekend I had the privilege of traveling home to visit my family. While there I mentioned to them that I had a paper to write in regards to arguments made for being prochoice or prolife and I wanted their opinions. From our discussion I learned that my grandparents used the Natural Family Planning method to maintain only having two children since that is all they could afford. Now being open with my family I asked my grandparents how hard it was for them to abstain in times of desire or the most fertile times of the month. My grandparents explained that although it was very difficult it did not break their marriage but at times it caused extreme tension between the two of them. To finish the discussion I posed the question to them that had the church allowed various forms of contraception like the pill or a condem would they have preferred those methods to maintain the number of children or would they have stuck with Natural Family Planning.

  The answer I recieved from my quite conservative and religious grandfather I was NOT expecting. He informed me that he wasn't sure. He understands that NFP was what worked for them but he will not deny that all of it was heaven on earth. It took lots of hard work for him to get over the uneasiness of discussing openly the cycles of a woman as well as he accomplishing the necessary education to be informed on what we as females learn growing up. Also he said that although his reasons were more structured by the finances available to him for the number of kids versus the number of kids personally desired, it did not change that as a young married couple wanting to enjoy the perks of married life having to constantly maintain regulations and abstain was very challenging. In the end his opinion was that he agrees NFP should be portrayed to young adults as a very viable option for regulating unintended pregnancies but it should not be the only option.

  I very much agree with him. It is very difficult for me to understand how the church can allow one type of contraception versus another when again the only real difference is the vocabulary used to describe but not the intent behind the protective measures. Now in class we read articles which gave the personal experiences of both a happy NFP married couple (web assignment) and a not happy NFP married couple (XP pg 28). I see both sides points of view but I am still looking for more opinions to help me solidify my own. Please respond with how you feel about NFP being allowed by the church and contraception not, as well as why its okay the church allows NFP. Thanks!

  Posted 21 Sep 09 in CST