Electric Lib

Homework

Yay for me, I just spent like hours and hours on homework. Anyhoo, lots to look forward to this week; Tomorrow, America's Next Top Model, and truly quality show, and Thursday/Friday I'll be in NYC! Then of course it's the weekend. That brings us right into April which means only a matter of weeks before April vacation. Once that's finished of course, it'll basically be May, lot's to look forward to there. The anticipation of Tyler and Kate's birthdays will make the first two weeks speed by, not to mention the SAT's, the AP exam, the prom and the dance performance! With that very busy month over, it'll be June, which means yes of course, summer. I think I'll stop there because with the way I like to look at time, summer will be over before I even realized it happened.

Carwash!

Well the gods must really be on my side, because just as I was about to lose my faith in the thought that you should never wash your car cause nature will do it... it rained!! I was about to break down and wash it myself, but my laziness perservered long enough for the rain to come. Then again, the dirt was rather suiting for my car, as it is slowly starting to look like one of those junk cars abandonded on the city streets that not even the car robbers will steal. Haha, ok, no it's really not bad, but i do have a trash bag taped onto one of the windows that won't roll up, sigh. But it's a nice, clean, white trashbag... And it only needs to last until Thursday when I get it fixed. Well actually my father will be responsible for taking it down to the garage. I will be unable to do so myself as I will be in NYC with my economics class! We're staying in a youth hostel... I bet it's all dirty and I'll probably get lice or some nasty disease. No, no, I'm kidding, I'm no hotel snob. The youth hostel sounds fun actually. The only places I'm skeptical about are Motels, because you know what the "M" in Motel stands for.... It stands for Murder, it's a Murder Hotel, aka Motel. Ok, so I don't know how many murders actually occur at Motels, but in the movies they certainly happen there. And you really must'nt blame me for the influence popular culture has over me in making me think that the M in motel stand for murder. As a young person today, I am bombarded with magazines, television, movies all adversiting to me, trying to appeal to youths like myself. It's dispicable the way those big executives target young children like myself who are simply looking for role models in the movies. And instead, we're shown terrible drug doing, sex having, people killing crazies! Oh sigh, I'm just kidding, I couldn't help wandering down that path after my insistance about m meaning murder. My lack of formatting for this page (not separating it into paragraphs) should show you pretty clearly that this is just a random rant, trail of thoughts. If I wanted you to really take something out of this, I would have formatted it more clearly.

I bring this up because we were discussing in interp today the format of Alan Patton's Cry, The Beloved Country which is a wonderful book (about one mans journey into Johannesburg, South Africa, to find his son.. Trouble ensues). Ms. Smartypants Kate made a terrific point that the book may have been formatted differently (for example, he doesn't use quotes to specify who's talking) to really express the separation from the Western style of writing, what we're used to, and also to blur the lines a bit between who's speaking which is especially interesing in a book in which one of the central issues is race. So by not always specifying who's speaking (whether they're Black or White) the author may be showing that there really isn't much difference between the two. That was the gist of our conversation.

On the issue of race, I watched two movies recently that dealt with the issue of race in the United States. On Friday, I watched "Save the Last Dance" (in which a white girl - Julie Stiles - from a small town is forced to move to an inner city setting in which she befriends many people and dates a black boy which arouses some contraversy). The overall message of the movie on the topic of racial issues is that it really doesn't matter what the color of your skin is, but it raises issues about the struggles that African Americans in particular face in the United States. The second movie I saw was the classic Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (I shouldn't even have to tell you what that's about). Now, I have plenty to say about the issue of racism and diversity and all that, but something else I felt was kind of interesting in these movies was the roles of black women in particular.

In the first movie there are two black women with significant roles, the first is the really bitchy one who used to date the boy Julia Stiles is with. The second is the sister of Julia Stile's boyfriend. And the sister is also a teenager and she had a child with a guy who eventually ends up going to jail. In the second movie, the only black woman you really see up until the end is the maid, Tilly. Anyhoo, (I just took a break to eat dinner and now I'm back and losing momentum for this entry, so I'll wrap it up). So basically, I was wondering how well these movies were portraying black women, and this thought was sparked in part by a line from Cry, The Beloved Country:

"He went out of the door, and she watched him through the little window, walking slowly to the door of the church. Then she sat down at his table, and put her head on it, and was silent, with the patient suffering of black women, with the suffering of oxen, with the suffering of any that are mute" (Paton, 40).

So I know I never really got to tying this all together, but I guess I'll just leave it for you to ponder!

Happy Easter

Happy Easter folks! Well, let's see, this means that April is soon, which is followed by May, which means June, which means school is over. And I have not yet found a summer job... I need to do that. I guess before I go searching I'd better get it straight that I'm probably not going to find a job that will pay me $500 an hour to sit around and talk to Alice (we're looking for jobs together). Sigh, well we'll see.

Four Day Weekend

I've been enjoying my long weekend very much so far, except that I haven't gotten outside quite as much as I should considering the beautiful weather and all, but I still have two days. I have not yet started any homework though. It's funny how teachers assign like four times the amount of homework because they seem to think a long weekend means more time to do homework, when in fact people probably still won't start their work until Sunday. Oh well. I'll get another short week next week when I head to New York City with my economics class on Thursday and Friday. That should be pretty fun. Well, that's all for now.

Meow

My copy catting friends are joining me in the wonderful world of online news reports on ourselves! (Alice first threw out the idea of it being a copy cat thing, in fact, it's something everyone ought to invest in; the most common side affects of maintaining a regular weblog include, but are not limited to: 1) improved writing ablility and comfortability with writing, 2) a nice feeling once you've thoughtfully reflected on your day and 3) more attention from parents who may ask you to report on the latest news of their children (haha, Carol and Steve, my favorite readers)). So anyhoo, I hope to be adding Julie and Alice to my sidebar soon so you can make the rounds in the daily reading of weblogs.

By the way, the weather is absolutely lovely out!

UVM

So that was pretty exciting that UVM won! We all laughed at Peter when he put UVM beating Syracuse on his bracket, but guess who's laughing now? Haha, that was lame, so I'm laughing, but anyways, UVM won and that's neat.

I'm 17

Yesterday was my birthday, hooray! And today I must wish happy birthdays to Beth and Myrto!

State Champs

Well congratulations to the boys for winning (45-44) the state championship last night for the first time since 1949! And happy birthday Emmett (FitzGerald)!!

Boys Basketball

Good luck to the boys tonight against Mill River in the championship game!

Ski Pics

Check out the ski trip to Canada I missed while I was gone.

Home Again

Well I'm home! We left the hotel yesterday at 11 (after a quick trip to the beach) and headed towards the air port (it was a long, bumpy, loud ride there). Then that afternoon we departed for Jamaica. Our flight was delayed for a few hours, but we finally left for Boston. My suitcase was about the last one to come off the thing (there was a suitcase jam which took up a lot of time), then the taxi driver got lost on the way to Melissa's, but we finally got there at about 2:00. Then we drove home this morning! I'm taking the rest of today as a rest day (as opposed to school), so that I can show up tomorrow well rested and ready to learn!

The rest of our trip was wonderful. On Sunday we went to the rain forest. We went in an open air jeep up to the rain forest. It was very cool, and our tour guides seemed to be enjoying it as well. After that we went to the beach again and later said goodbye to Anorld (a St. Lucian friend we made there who was leaving for Thailand the next day). On Monday we got up early to go on our sailing trip, but it was cancelled (and rescheduled for Tuesday) so we just went to the beach again, which was very nice. So that brings us to Tuesday, our sailing trip. The boat we were on was actually used in Pirates of the Carribean! Seriously, I'm not lying. And two of the crew members were in the movie, so that was neat. Hannah got to try steering the boat (she did wonderfully), and we both got to help lowering the sails (I offered to just watch, but nope, I helped). Then we sailed down to the town of Soufriere and walked into a volcano! It smelled like sulfur, but it wasn't too bad. Then we got back on the ship and sailed back. So all in all the trip was wonderful!

14 Days

Yes, yes we have entered the holy month, the month of Libby you might say. And only 14 days remain (including today) until that sacred day on which I will celebrate my birth! Mm hmm, that's right, I'll be 17 (yup dad it's true, deny it as you might it's unavoidable).

Aside from that, St. Lucia is still incredibly wonderful. The people are still friendly, the sun is still hot and the island is still lovely. I really would like to post some pictures for you guys this time, so when I get home and get some pictures set up, I'll be sure to notify you. Tomorrow we venture home (although who knows how long that will take - air jamaica's flights for Tuesday all got cancelled because it wasn't up to some code.... hopefully we won't meet the same fate tomorrow).