The lecture in class today on Haiti was very eye-opening for me. The line that most affected me was when he said, "an hour flight from Florida, 300,000 people died. Why wouldn't I do something." I have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to travel all over the world. I have spent time doing humanitarian work in Sub-Saharan Africa and I thought before this that I had seen some extreme poverty, but nothing I have seen compares with the kind of destruction and poverty that is currently in Haiti. I still cannot imagine what these people must be thinking and feeling. But it was encouraging to see that people are trying to put their lives back together in some way and begin to live again.

Reading this letter was an extremely interesting and eye-opening experience for me. Before you mentioned it in class, I had given very little thought to people serving life in prison. When you did mention in class several times about going and getting to know these "lifers," I was intrigued and thought that that was a very good thing to do. But reading this posting really put into perspective that people spending their lives behind bars are still real people, and many of them are not the monsters that we so often think of them as in out minds. As I read this, I genuinely felt as though I liked this person and that he was a good, compassionate person. i think it is all too easy to just stick labels on people-- good people and bad people. It is easy to say that everyone in prison, especially lifers, are "bad people, without thinking about that people grow and change and become different.

What I also found interesting about this letter is that the compassion that this man and some of his friends in prison have seems largely greater than that of people in the general population. How many people would just ignore a person that they hate, even if they were crying and alone because a loved one died. i think that too many people would do that without even thinking. It was also interesting for me to read this because of how at peace with himself, his life, and situation this man seems. I'm sure that it took a long time, but the kind of self actualization that he seems to have experienced is incredible and far beyond what most people achieve in their lives.

I think that this story really have me an entirely new perspective on people in prison. Like you said, I'm sure there are plenty of people who deserve to be in prison for life, but there are other people who seem like better human beings than a lot of people in the general population. I genuinely felt bad for this man reading this letter, and it made me wonder about life sentences without the possibility of parole. Is it right that some people, like this man, who have truly been changed by their time in prison, never be allowed out again. For this man, it seems as though prison has allowed him to find himself and he would probably do extremely well being placed back in society, It seems to me that the point of prison should be to change people, to rehabilitate them and then allowing them to slowly progress back into society. Maybe we should be giving people like this another chance?

It is so unfortunate that body image has to be such a prevalent part of our culture. Laurie, I really enjoyed the play that you wrote in class. It really showed our culture's obsession with body image for how silly and strange it is. Being a woman is so much more than how we look on the outside. It is hard to pinpoint what it means to be a woman but it is about how each of us feels, and the common history, struggles, and essence of womanhood that we all share. I wish more women could accept themselves and their bodies the way they are, and realize that they are beautiful and feminine without conforming to the unrealistic standards set by Hollywood and in the magazines.

Going into this lecture, I thought that I had a pretty good grasp on Islam and where Muslim people are coming from. I spent a summer living with a Turkish Muslim family, though I’ll admit they were rather liberal as far the religion was concerned, and through this experience I feel as though I gained a perspective on Islam that I never had before. I grew up in a more conservative Christian family, and I think that living with a Muslim family really helped to broaden my world view. Over that summer I came to really respect Islam and the people who practice this religion. I felt that my Christian upbringing was highly respected by this family, and I in turn respected their religion. (The two really aren’t all that different after all.) I’ll admit, when I walked into class today, I thought great, an issue I know a lot about. But this lecture to me was extremely interesting and enlightening.
I had never before thought about Muslim extremists in this light. I have always been opposed to the war in Iraq and any war that is strictly about taking a good from another country that is not rightfully ours, but I had never really put myself in the place of the people actually living in Iraq and how they must feel about the situation. I also heard a lot of new clips from politicians that I had never heard before. And showing that clip from Jesus Camp terrified me, as that film has each time I had seen it. I had never put myself in the place of an Arab Muslim looking at Americans, and the result was very interesting. It just allowed me to totally look at America in way I never had before. I really appreciated the lecture for that reason.
Let me be clear that I do not hate Christianity or Christians and I really do not think that that is what Sam’s lecture was getting at either as some people have been saying on this blog entry. He was simply trying to get the class to look at the world from a different perspective, and at least for me, he succeeded in doing that with this lecture. He chose to look at Christianity because that is the religion that most Americans and politicians identify with and probably the one that Muslims in Iraq are looking at when they see the American people. I think that as a whole, everyone should be less sensitive and try and see this lecture for what it’s worth. It was simply trying to get everyone to broaden and change their view of the war and the world and I know for me this lecture really did that. It got me to think, and I believe that that is the basic goal of this whole class.

Welfare is something that I am certainly no expert on. I see its purpose in society and I see the problems that are associated with it as well. People certainly abuse the welfare system. That cannot be denied. But I think that eliminating welfare in this country completely would be a disaster. There are children and families who are dependent on this and we can't simply pull that support away from them without any thought. I think that the system could be reworked to provide support to families while honestly helping them get equipped and prepared to work in the world and support themselves. This way we could help eliminate the need and people would not abuse the system as much as they do now.

I completely agree. I have honestly never thought about this topic before, but to me it doesn't really matter at all. Who cares if in fifty years there won't be many white people left in the US. That is just the way the world is going, and I think it's probably a good. Thing. Maybe if the "racial lines" aren't as clear, we can move closer to total equality for everyone. I was also raised to believe that skin color doesn't make a difference and I think its good that we are headed towards a society that has so many different races that it would be hard to pick out a majority. That would hopefully do good things for our society and country.

I agree with you and Sam in some regards on this. People really do need to stop overreacting about things. The people writing the census put a lot of time and effort into figuring out what to put on the form. The term "negro" was obviously put there with much thought and effort to include a segment of the population. People did respond harshly to this without really being informed of why they put that term on the census.

On the other hand, I had a bit of an experience the other week that goes along well with this topic and gave me a better view on how people look at the census form. As a white woman, filling out the census is easy for me, but for others it is more difficult. My best friend here is Salvadorian. She would never consider herself anything but Latino in ethnicity and race. I was over at her apartment while she was filling out the census form and when she got to the race question, she had no idea what to fill out. There was absolutely no box for Hispanic or Latino. She did not, in any way, identify herself with any of the races listed on the Census form and had no idea what to put. She ended up writing in Latino on the form. I was very surprised myself that there was no choice for this, and I really wonder why. If anyone has any insight on this, I would honestly love to know. Another one of my friends is half Cuban and half Puerto Rican. She also did not know how to answer the census form, because both of those were choices for ethnicity. She does not identify strongly with one group or the other and did not know what to put down on the form. For me, its really easy. I'm white. I check the box that says white. But for other people, it can actually be challenging to know what you are supposed to put on the form, so give people a little sympathy with getting offended or confused by the census. its not as easy as you may think.

I think that there are really two sides to thinking about the census. On one hand, I do understand how it can be confusing to fill out, and even how people could be offended. Overall, however, I do believe that people have way overreacted to the questions on the census. There seems to be absolutely no way to make everyone happy and not offend anyone. Before people get really upset about something, perhaps they should look into why the word "negro" was placed on the census. The people who created the census worked very hard to be as inclusive as possible and not offend anyone. But their best efforts weren't enough, and they probably never will be. People should really just move on the whole situation. In a few weeks, when the census is over and done with, people will have forgotten all about it and moved on to the next thing to be offended about.

This video was extremely difficult to watch, even as a white woman. I was deeply disturbed by the girl who said the white baby doll was "good" because it was white. I had never seen this video before, but I had heard of the earlier version of it. I would have thought that in today's society, little girls would be more likely to choice the black baby doll, and was actually really surprised to find out that this is not true. This video was so sad to me and then hearing the comments from girls in class about wanting white dolls as children was also equally sad to me. It really shows how far we have to go in achieving equality in America, so sad.

My roommate has been working on this play all semester and I was really excited to watch this clip from it. I think that the issue of "that time of the month" is interesting to discuss this way since it is something never really discussed in public. I have mixed feelings on the issue as a whole. I have always found it rather strange that the issue is so taboo. Periods happen to every woman, every single month for the vast majority of our lives. I don't like that I feel the need to hide this aspect of my life as much as I currently do. It happens and men need to realize that and not be so intimidated by it. I agreed in class with the majority of what Sam said, though it was a bit awkward to here it from a man. I had literally never heard a man talk about a woman's period before. I appreciated that Sam would approach this issue at all, but I also understand why men feel uncomfortable around women talking about this time of the month. This is something that men literally can never have any understanding of. They can understand in theory what happens, but without having ever experienced it, I cannot understand how women bleeding and talking about it makes men uncomfortable.
Personally, I think there needs to be some kind of balance between guys being allowed to feel uncomfortable and at the same time understanding that this monthly cycle is part of our lives and is not going away. I really do think that is ok for guys to feel uncomfortable about it. I just don’t want them to get offended when we talk about it or complain about cramps or something. It needs to be a more touchable subject in society as a whole. Guys should not get mad when we don’t feel like going out because we are hurting and we should be able to say the reason why we don’t feel well to our employers or just to society in general.
Like I said, I really appreciated that Sam was able to bring this issue up in class. It is not something, I know, that is easy for men to talk about and it is an issue that needs to be less taboo in society. I was awkward as everyone else in that class, but I honestly think that it was mainly because it is something that people just don’t talk about in today’s society. My period is something that I personally don’t often talk about and don’t really feel needs a lot of attention, but I do agree that it would be nice if I did not have to feel embarrassed about being a woman. This is something that every woman has to deal with for almost her whole life and men really need to realize this and start being more accepting.

I agree. I think that it is important that we become more informed on the past as a whole in this nation, but rewriting history books makes me nervous. I think it is important to learn about the wrongs committed by our nation in the past, and I was taught about to a degree in a high school history class. But teaching children in elementary about genocide that their ancestors committed could instill a kind of guilt in them from a young age that would be more than bearable. We need to acknowledge the wrongs committed and do more to help resolve the actions of the past. We should focus more on Native Americans in public schools to bring more attention to the issue, we simply need to be careful how we handle the situation.