HW 25 - Response to Sicko

          The movie Sicko stuck out to me, and taught me things about America and other countries that I never knew before.  I never knew that Hilary Clinton was actually here to help us that much by trying to get free health care like France and Canada have according to the movie.  The movie said that She wanted to make America first in the worldwide healthcare system, but we ended up falling to number 36 because the other people in the office didn't want this law passed.  So it was not allowed for people to mention Free healthcare in the white house.  The Movie Sicko taught us that health care isn't really health care, because when you care for somebody because they need it because they are sick, you don't care about the time it takes, you care about there life and well-being, but in this health care system, the only thing that they really care about is the money they make, so they usually tell somebody who desperately needs help the answer no just because they don't have the money.
          According to the movie, there was one coupe, where the lady's husband had gotten a heart attack, then another one, and then another one.  So that was expensive for them with all of his trips to the hospital. Then when they thought that nothing could of gotten worse, she got diagnosed with cancer,. and pretty soon after nearly going bankrupt, they could no longer afford there house, so the only option was to move in with there daughter.  This connects back to my thesis because she really needed help, and with all of the expenses due to her illness, the government didn't really care, if they didn't give them money (taxes) they had to get out of the house.  Another piece that was in the movie was a family that was doing really well, but one day, this ladies husband, got diagnosed with kidney cancer, they went to the doctor and said that they were able to do a transplant.  It looked like a happy day for this man, but then the doctors took a look at his records and denied him for a transplant because they didn't have the money.  A couple days had passed, and the husband went to sleep, and then after died.  This also relates to my thesis because due to not enough money, a man lost his life, and the company dindn't even seem affected by it, until one women spoke out, and said that she was the one who denied the man's plans for a kidney, thus resulting in his death.
          This movie impacted me because before I knew America wasn't perfect, but they tried to make it a good system but now I know that America says things like we will take care of you but, they are really saying let me hold your wallet forever.  The government will always find a way to make sure that you give up your money, even if they make some peope go into debt, they don't care.  There slogan probably says, money can buy anything.  To them money represents power like I can do anything I want because we have more money than all of you. 

HW 24 - Illness & Dying Book, Part 3

          I am currently on page 109, and so far.  Mithc was on his way to Morrie's house, and is greeted not by Connie as he usually is, but by Charlotte, Morrie's wife. In keeping with Morrie's wishes, Charlotte has kept her job as a professor at M.I.T., and Mitch is surprised to find her at home. She tells Mitch that Morrie isn't having a good day, and also admits that he can no longer eat the food that Mitch brings him each week, as he can only ingest soft food and liquids. Morrie hadn't told him, as he hadn't wanted to hurt Mitch's feelings. Ch arlotte seems despondent, and Mitch attributes her distant look to her exhaustion, as she often is up throughout the night with Morrie when he cannot sleep. Morrie's condition had been decreasing rapidly, and now there are home health care workers working 24-hour shifts to care for him. Mitch notices the many pill bottles that line the kitchen table.  Morrie is now coughing more violently than ever and struggles for breath as he talks with Mitch. He explains to Mitch that he is consciously "detaching himself from the experience," and explains the Buddhist philosophy that one should not cling to things because everything that exists is impermanent.
          I feel that Morrie and his wife have a special connection where they are able to sense when either one of them in trouble.  Becuase just for Morrie's wife Charlotte to show up unexpected, there is a reason for her apperance.  I think that Morrie's time might come sooner than expeccted, becuase it is still to soon for him to be this sick

HW 23 - Illness & Dying Book, Part 2

          I am currently on page 91, and basically what I have read so far is that it is another semester the the university where Morrie has been currently teaching.  But due to his illness, Morrie is more weak than he has ever been in his life,  So he isn't able to move around without using a wheelchair.  Know he spends his reamaing days on earth talking about his past and giving advice to the younger generation.  Basically he and Mitch were discussing children and does he regret having them.  Morrie said, "There is no other experience like having children"!  He also was saying how if he could relive the process, he would do it again and again.  I have a couple of predictions about what is to further come in the book.  I believe that as time goes on and Morrie's illness starts to take its toll, Morrie will still try and make the best of his remaining time left on the earth becuase the illness takes his life, Morrie doesn't need to be active to have fun, Morrie likes to write and talk, and as long as he has Mitch to talk to, I'll think that he will be just fine.
          I am actually suprised on how Morrie is dealing with his illness.  It touches me becuase, when he found out he was sick and probably going to die, he had second thoughts on life, and continued to do his daily ruitine, it was almost like he didn't have hi illness.  Morrie didn't feal like God had forgotten him, he accepted that everyone was going to die at somepoint, and his was just a little bit sooner than everyone elses, and he has accepted that.  He said a quote that really got me thinking, and that was once people accept the fact that thy are going to die, they can start living.  And this quote to me was people think too much about when and how they are going to die, but once you accept the fact and son't care how you are going to die, you can make the best of your life and do the things you were probably originally not planned to do. 

HW 21b - Comments

Larche G said...

Willie,

I thought you listed some good insights from the guest speaker that you could have talked about further. I liked how in your first paragraph you connected with some of the things the speaker said when your grandfather died. However, the assignment was to write three paragraphs addressing the insights you got from the speaker and your own thoughts /connections regarding them. I definitely think you could have expanded on your thoughts and made further connections by writing more about your experiences with illness or death. You were off to a good start.

Kayla R said...

Willie,
I thnk you did a good job with connections. Connecting it to personal life is always a good way to help the reader understand what the author might be going through. Especially for someone that has never read this book. Maybe you could try like more connections. Like connections to you, or to the world or to another book you have read. Maybe put more of your opnion in there along with the facts. I liked how you gave facts so we can get a better interpretation of the book. You did a good job. Also maybe try some predictions on what you think this could lead to in life, and why this could be happeneing. Good job thought

HW 22 - Illness & Dying Book Part 1

          The book I am reading is Tuesday's with Morrie, and so far it is about a guy who has a major illness and the doctors gave him about 2 years to live.  But over the course of those months in the first year, Morrie has made the best of it.  He still had continued his daily routine as a teacher in a university.  But he was going to retire anyway due to his illness.  He had told his students as soon as he got into the classroom.  As the time went by Morrie had lost a lot of weight and had gotten so skinny that it looks like you were able to see his bones.  And soon after that he wasn't able to do things on his own, he was too weak. 
          Basically the story was a flashback within a flashback, it was almost told from his perspective, but it wasn't, and after each chapter, there would be another flashback within the flashback that shows his years in high school.  A quote that I found interesting n the book was, :finally, one student, a thin, quiet, dark-haired girlwhom I notice almost always wears bulky white fisherman sweaters, crosses her arms over her chest, closes her chest, leans back, and does not flinch, like one of those lipton tea commercials where the model splashes into the pool.  Basically I chose this quote because I thought that it was saying don't believe what your eyes tell you.  Your eyes will lie to you.  See with your body, not your eyes.  This quote was on pages 60-61.

HW 21 - Expert #1

          While listening to the story about her husband, there were a couple of things that I thought were very interesting.  Those things were...
- was how he never had a bad illness in the past before the illness he had now
- he was one of those men who didn't go to the doctor as soon as they felt something wrong, and it wasn't entirely his fault because something was wrong with there insurance, so he couldn't go until 11 months had passed (how long it took to get insured).
- It wasn't one big long rush of pain and sickness, one time he might of felt bad and weak, and at another time, he could of felt really good, like she said he was well enough to go on the family vacation to play mini-golf, but then after, he asked for a oxygen tank.
- In the whole time he was sick, they never talked about death, and didn't even mention it.
- She had no less respect for death after he died.
          I can connect some of these things to myself because for one thing, before my grandfather died, I would pray to god not to take him, and I would do this every night, then one day my mom got that phone call and my grandmother said, that's it, he is gone, at first, I didn't know what to feel, it felt like a big hole inside of me where all of my emotions would just pour out into I was a hollow shell of emptyness.

HW 20 - Thinking/Writing Groups

1)
Willie Rich
wwandthechocofactory@gmail.com
http://treystar3.blogspot.com/

2)
Older: sister-cin.anthony@gmail.com
Younger: sister-bsgrule511@gmail.com

3)
Older: Cineca
Younger: Kayla

HW 19 - Family Perspectives on Illness & Dying

         When I asked my mom about illness, and dying, she said that I should protect my body, and take care of, because if you don't, it is just a bomb of sickness waiting to explode at any moment.  She knows that everyone is going to die eventually, and has accepted that.  And if you were good on earth, God will reach his hand out and welcome you to his gateway of heave, and if you weren't like you have murdered and raped people, then you are not welcome to go to heaven.  Then I had a lot to think about because I also have opinions on dying.  Why are we even put on earth just to be taken away at some part of your life, whether it is early or later than expected.  It is really confusing to think about what happens when you die, it is almost impossible to think about

HW 18 - Health & Illness & Feasting

         Another year another thanksgiving.  Although this thanksgiving was a lot different from last years one.  There were a lot of empty chairs, my family members aren't dead, it is just that they are all getting older, so it is harder for them to get up and travel to different places like they used to.  The food was the same, the same amount, but every year only one thing changes, and that is the amount of people that show up there.  Before we  start eating, all of us gather around the table, join hands, and thank the lord for this feast that is in front of us. We also think of those who don't have all the materials needed to make a nice Thanksgiving dinner.  Then we go and eat, I eat, and get more, I don't really watch football, if everyone is crowded around the game and watching, then I will watch, but most of the time, i just go in the room, and play video games.  I usually do this every thanksgiving.  I am not active on thanksgiving, my body is put on park for the whole day-the anti-body.

          Once thanksgiving is over, everyone hangs around and starts talking because this is the actual only moment that our whole family could spend time together and see each other.  I mostly play video games after talking for a couple of hours with my cousins.  They all arrive around 6:30pm and leave about 11:30pm, by the time they leave, it is about time for everyone, and e to go to bed, but me and cousin stay up thinking about the next day and thinking about another past thanksgiving.  I see Thanksgiving as not another holiday, but a time for family to be together.  The food and football are not really what is important, it is about family gathering together.

HW 17 - First Thoughts on the Illness & Dying Unit

1) I have never really did anything in the past that has to do with illness and dying.

2) I have always seen illness as a consequence of not taking care of your body better, like eating healthy and exercising when they are young.  But some illnesses are preventable and just come out of nowhere.  Also most young kids and people are diagnosed with these diseases.  Most people start taking care of themselves when they are young, and say I am never gonna get fat or big.  But as they get older, there food metabolism slows down and they don't know it and just keeps on eating.  Then they get lazy, its not a lot of extra fat, just a couple of walks and jogs will get rid of it, but then you say, i will do it tomorrow, but your lazy, and forget, and eat like you would normally eat, then you get bigger, and all that fat surrounds your heart.  And then the next thing you know, you probably get diabetes, and the fat stays around your heart, and forces your heart to pump harder, and that leads to heart attacks.
 
3) There are more poor black people than white people so a lot more people can't afford to pay for a yearly check up, resulting in a lot of sick black people.  I don't know why, but most black people are born poor, and a lot of there jobs are taken away.. like in the Freakonomics movie, it takes about a week to 2 weeks for a white person to find a job, and it takes up to about 12 weeks to get there letter answered, and when they work at the same job, the white person would get payed more.

4) My family especially approaches this seriously. Especially my older sister because she had wanted to become a doctor, so she knows about these illnesses and knows how to approach this situation if it had ever come up.  My dad has diabetes, he was skinny and thin when he was younger, but than he stared to let go and became bigger, but now he is starting to take care of himself and sets goals for himself.  But those goals sometimes he forgets, and doesn't do them for a while and then he'll say that he'll do them again, but he forgets again, and today he says he sets goals fro himself.  But I don't know how long he'll keep it up before he stops.

5) I never want to become so sick that I was going to die, for some reason I am scared to die.  Most of those sicknesses are most of the time a slow and painful death, for every second that those people are sick they are sad and miserable.  We can get most young adults to take care of themselves by telling them that healthy food is good too, and show them down the path thay they are heading if they continue to eat and not exercise.  Once they see how hard it is too do this, maybe they will have a change in there food ways and eat healthier.

HW 12 - Final Food Project 2 - Outline

Many of the dominant social practices in our society - practices that define a "normal" life - on further investigation turn out to involve nightmares and industrial atrocities. 


The food industry doesn't care about the workers or animals, they only want the money.  


supporting claim #1:workers are treated unfairly by their employers and work in unsafe conditions
evidence:  movie clip about workers getting injured
evidence:  http://www.organicconsumers.org/irrad/slaughterworkers.cfm 
evidence:  mexican workers are treated like slaves in a movie clip

supporting claim #2: the treatment of the animals both physcially and what they are fed.
evidence: Pollan book, page 219 (Animals suffering)
evidence: movie clip about cruel punishment to cows and pigs
evidence: Pollan book, animals living in there own mess
evidence: Pollan book, animals are fed to othere animals

HW 10 - Food, Inc. Response

          The main ideas of this film were to show the people what is in there food, where there food comes from and what they can do to be healthier.  It showed the evils of the corn industry.  People think corn is a healthy vegetable, but there are dark secrets to this corn.  To farmers, they prize corn like we prize money.  Farmers give corn to the factories to be processed, farmers know what the factories do to our corn, but they don't care.  The only thing that these farmers care about, is the money that they get afterwards.  They think we are just walking bags of money just handing them a piece every time we leave the supermarket,
          The movie showed a lot of things that the book couldn't show inside of your head.  The movies showed the people's on the farms reaction when in the chicken places where all of the chicken were bunched up.  They showed how it looks inside and people's thoughts based upon what they do everyday.  The book just told us how the chicken were living when they were inside of those pens before being slaughtered.  The movie also showed ho the animals were slaughtered with actual graphic videos, were the book just showed them holding up a chicken being prepared to get slaughtered, and after the slaughtering already happened, with the gets and how they get rid of all the extra parts of animals.
          I already knew that they put chemicals inside there food to make it last longer, but after watching the movie, I never knew that the chemicals were this dangerous to our bodies.  These chemicals aren't 100 percent safe.  Some kids are getting bigger by eating these chemicals, and some people are dying.  The fat in this food plus the chemicals when eaten gets stuck around your heart (the fat parts) and forces your heart to pump harder to get more blood.  This results in a lot of people having heart attacks.

HW 9 - Freakonomics Response

Question 3: The people in Freakonomics mostly rely on the evidence in front of them given to them by the kids. Like when they tried to pay kids $50 each month if they were able to pass there classes. It wasn't successful but they still had quite a bit of evidence to test if it was successful of unsuccessful. 5-7 percent of kids passed when they thought they weren't. Some other pieces of evidence they found was they were trying to determine if someone name had determined how there personality was. But it was proved that your name doesn't make up your personality. It was really the neighborhood that you grew up in. If you grew up in a bad neighborhood, then that is what you might become, but if grew up in a good neighborhood then maybe you might turn out better. One more piece of evidence was how when they said when someone is cheating, you can look in the numbers. LIke when sumos fight in like a tournament and there si someone who is 7-6 vs someone who is 6-6 the person who is 7-6 would most of the time lose, but in the next round, 95 percent of the time the person 7-6 would win against the person who beat him last round.


Question 2: The people in Freakonomics had very interesting points.  One of the points they brought up was when there is a white person looking for a job, and a black person looking for a job.  They would send out job applications to people but the outcome wasn't right from my perspective. On the application, the names of the person filling out the application determined how long it would take for a person to take a look at their application.  What they considered a black name like, Deshawn, Tyshawn, etc compared to someone like, Chester, Todd, etc made it easier or difficult to find the same job either race was trying to get.  It could take the white person only 3 weeks to get hired.  Where it takes a black person up to 11 weeks to get hired. 

  

HW 7 - Reading Response Monday

CHAPTER 1: My version of corn is a special one.  I am here today to tell you how corn has evolved over the period of time.  Corn has spread all over the world really fast and it is really successful

CHAPTER 2: Corn isn't just another vegetable that people eat.  Corn is everything that you basically eat.  Corn is in the meat you eat, the meat that you buy.  Corn has spread like gold across the world and continues today.  


CHAPTER 3: Corn doesn't have all natural ingredients that you people think.  I am her to tell you that corn actually has nitrogen inside of it.


CHAPTER 4: The leftover corn is wasted and thrown out somewhere by emptying it and letting it pass through elevators, pipes, mills, and laboratories.

CHAPTER 5: We feed our cows mostly corn and sometimes other cow parts, but that backfired on us.  In England the people started dying because of what they called mad cow disease.  It was a infection inside of the cows brain.

CHAPTER 6: Do you want to know where your food comes from.  Sure it comes from animals but do you want to know how we make it stay fresh.  We put preservatives inside of our/your food so that we can make it stay fresh longer.  It doesn't do anything to your bodies, like increase fat around your heart, nothing like that


CHAPTER 7: Corn isn't as healthy as some people think it is.  Most childhood obesity com from eating food, but inside of that food os what we call corn.  Mcdonald's use corn in there food and tried super sizing there meals.  Because, they found out people tend to eat 30 percent more when they have a bigger tray of food.

CHAPTER 8: There are many types of food in the world, there is sweet, sour, spicy, tender, bitter, hard, and juicy food.  Most people decide what they eat and decide whether they like lit or not.

CHAPTER 9: Fast foods have a lot of chemicals inside of here food.  Take the chicken nuggets for example, o r the chemical nuggets, they have chemicals inside of them.  One chemical called Dimethylopolysiloxene is suspected by people of causing cancer.

CHAPTER 10: Not all corn is bad. There is in fact some healthy food out there, we call that organic food.  100 percent organic food are products that contain only certified organic ingredients


CHAPTER 11: Not all corn is healthy like we were making it out to be.  Your actually eating oil that is put in some food.  in 2003, researchers studied the crops of two types of corn, strwaberries, and blackberries.  These plants were identical and grew side by side.  One set of plants was grown using organic methods, but the other set was grown conventionally with chemical fertillizer, pesticides, and herbicides.

 CHAPTER 12: Unlike animals, we humans can't eat grass, but we don't always need to kill animals in order to get meat.  We can put plants such as corn into meat like w already do in order to make corn into everything that you eat.  A Naylor farm is industrial, has annual species, monoculture, fossil fules, a global market, and imported fertility.  The polyface farm is ecological, has perennial species, diverse crop species, solar energy, a local market, and local fertility. 

CHAPTER 13: Have you really actually looked at grass?  When we humans look at grass, all we see is the samething over and over agian, but we never looked at grass form a cow's perspective,  to a cow, grass is like a open buffet, where they get to eat everything/anything that they are able to find.  My farm was abused for 150 years, and today I am still restoring the land.  I wish my dad was here to see what a great job we done to make the farm what it is today.

CHAPTER 14: When we let or chickens go loose in pasture, we rely on there natural instincts to clean up after the herbivores.  During the winter our cows and chickens leave there pastures and head into the barn.  But our polyface farm doesn't stop, so we just move our work indoors.  We must leave the manure the cow's leave wherever it falls from.  This usually stays beneath the cattle. 

CHAPTER 15: We round up the chicken in the morning and put them in big plastic crates.  We kiil them, take out there guts, and plucker them by taking of all of there feathers.  We put all of this stuff in a big pile and prepare it for extraction.  The first thing you must do is cut off its head.

CHAPTER 16:

HW 4 - Your Families' Foodway

     People in older generations didn't really care about what they had/were consuming at there time period.  But as time had went on, people started becoming curious about what they were eating.  And that is a study that continues into the world today.  My grandparents didn't care what they were eating when they were young, but as they got older, it started to affect them in ways such as diabetes and heart problems.  They use to eat a lot of sugary treats and fast foods.   Now in the younger generation such as me and my cousins like my age, care and watch what they eat, and think twice about what we eat most of the time
    
     In my house usually/most of the time, my mow gets the food and cooks the food, also she does the dishes, but sometimes, my does all those things too at different times of the day.  My mom usually does this for lunch and dinner, but my dad 95% of the time makes us breakfast, gets the food, and then washes the dishes.  When My dad was younger he also was eating like my grandparents, and now he is working out, and exercising trying to get more healthy and to lose his stomach.  I actually thought all healthy food was like salad and whole grain this/that.  But then there are pastas that are healthier than the original, there are cereals that are healthy, and there are drinks that are healthy also.  That changed my opinion on healthy foods, because I actually enjoy eating those foods most of the time
    
     In my fridge I mostly have healthy foods such as, salads, water, apple juice.  I have these things because my mom and dad are exercising to stay healthy so they cleared the whole fridge to get rid of all the junk food that they liked to not get tempted by all of that unhealthy stuff.  I don't mind these things in our fridge because there actually really good.  I think my mom sticks to exercising more than my dad because my mom actually does it everyday twice.  She'll actually park further from her job so she could get in a nice little walk before she goes to work.  My does it sometimes a week, mostly 3 times a week.  The only time my mom doesn't work out is when we go to church, if she is sick, if something has come up unexpectedly, or if she is sore from the work out before.

HW 3 - Food - Fast Food Insights and Green Market ...

nORMaL is WEIRD Course Blog: HW 3 - Food - Fast Food Insights and Green Market ...: "
          Fast food restaurants are so succesful because the people don't have to wait for their food especially if they are on the go. People eat Mcdonalds like it is something good and even though they know that it isn't healthy, they eat it anyway for many reasons.
         Both places/the green market and Mcdonalds had lots of people and they both had seperated their food from drinks. The green house was unhealthy in a way because they were selling a lot of unhealthy pies and bad energy drinks as well as selling plants and flowers.  The people in Mcdonalds looked bigger  compared to the people in the green market because in the green market. there treats were slowly prepared and not rushed, and it was made with natural ingredients.  In contrast Mcdonalds food was defrosted and heated up, also known as fast food.  It was processed.
          I eat a lot so I usually spend more time at Mcdonalds because even though the green market has food it mostly has snacks such as pies, cookies, and bread.  But at Mdonalds, I am able to get a full meal.  I really don't eat Mcdonalds like I use to because it isn't good for you.  Like on the news one time, a mother tried to sue Mcdonalds because her son got fat from eating it everyday.  So that means that all that fat gets stuck inside you and around your heart causing heart problems.
          I really am not a plant person because they attract the most annoying bugs.. I don't mind bees, but I hate it when they buzz in your ears and fly around you for just a long period of time.  I really am not a plant person, but i sometimes enjoy going to the green market with my mom because there are a bunch of plants that I actually like to see like cactuses and the one plant that can eat flies.  So I spend more time around green market than I do Mcdonalds.  I like that because I can breath the fresh air .

www.normalisweirdsof.blogspot.com          There are different types of food in the world.  There is food that is good is for you and food that is bad for you.  Most people only eat salads and fruit.  They don't eat meat.  Then there are people who eat both salads fruit and meat.  To me I really like chicken.  I eat chicken in ways not everybody understands.  Only I do.  I mostly eat my chicken from a place called Popeyes.  In order for me to like food, it has to be worth the money spent for it and I want to have seconds.  

           When I usually go to Popeyes, I usually go with my friends, David, Ruben, Travis, Marc, And Angel.  We sit inside on wooden benches.  And we usually talk English at the table.  For breakfast i usually have breakfast, for lunch I go to Popeyes and have some chicken, and at dinner, either my mom makes something for dinner, or I have leftover dinner form last night.  To snack on I usually have some pie.    The only food I actually really like to make is a lasagna.  A true masterpiece of good food.  

           

          When I go home my mom doesn't really make anything for our dinner because she gets us food we can make by our selves from Path Mark.  Sometimes she goes out and makes us food like that she saves for the next night