New York -- more thoughts from sociology.

So I am planning on blogging more about my great grandmother. Hopefully blogs on most of my family will come. Anyway, my great-grandma currently lives in a nursing home. She has told me all kinds of stories about how life was in Paris many years ago...


My grandma began high school when she was 11 in 1930 and graduated when she was 15. Once when eating with her at the nursing home, she told me about a man she knows who lives in the same nursing home. He, his wife, another married couple, and my great-grandma carpooled to New York city together when my grandma was 17. At least I think that's what I remember her saying. The man in the nursing home now has no idea who my grandma is.



Now, for some sociology: do you ever think that people in old pictures look older than they should be? I mean, looking through old yearbooks, don't you think that people appear older? Did they act older? Was it just because of how they dressed and cared for themselves? Did their more difficut lives force them to grow up quickly?. .



I am the same age that my grandma was when she took a road trip to New York eighty-three years ago. She split the cost of the trip with her friends and the entire, one-week trip cost her $19. This summer I am going to New York with over fifty of my friends. The trip is carefully fund-raised, carefully planned, and carefully supervised. I am paying much more than $19 to go too.



Would my parents let me drive to New York with five of my friends? Would yours? hmm... When I go to New York this summer, I will be thinking about how times have changed. I will also take my grandma's advice: "You can't work all the time. Make sure you have some fun."

CD review: Almost Alice

Ok. I did it. I bought the soundtrack to Alice in Wonderland.

So, for this review, let's start with packaging. The cover features the Mad Hatter who is arguably the movie's most interesting character. So at least I have a cool picture of Johnny Depp. And the script on the hat just 'almost' fits with the picture. Hastily done maybe??
The pictures on the inside of the booklet are pretty cool. A lot of retro 'Alice' stuff and other than that, just band pictures taken from old shoots. Cool? yes. Original? no. Rushed? probably.

Packaging - 2.5/5

Then there's the music. I picked this up mainly for two reasons: (1) the intensely awesome Avril Lavigne song "Alice" that plays at the end of the movie, and (2) the star-filled line-up of musicians featured including Owl City, 3Oh!3, Plain White Tees, Metro Station, and Shinedown. This is where I got disappointed. The first track "Alice" does stand out as a truly amazing song. The second track, All-American Rejects' "Poison", begins well but then b-sections in to a completely different, not-so-good song. I was hopeful for Owl City, but their song was a re-release from a previous album. Most of the other songs are Alice-themed throw togethers that seem to have little depth.

Music - 3/5

Verdict - Listen and judge for yourself online. Download "Alice" but leave the Mad Hatter on the shelf.

What do we do that is longer than life?

You have, no doubt, heard the phrase, "life is short."

Maybe, you have questioned whether or not this is true, maybe, you haven't.

You might wonder what is out there that lasts longer than life.

So, I will try to give a few simple answers.

One thing that is very obvious to me is tradition. Counless traditions date back far before most of us were born. When my great-grandma was moving out of her house, I found some of her high school yearbooks and looked through them. It was amazing to see Paris High School in the 1930s. There were three sports (football, basketball, and track), school plays, a relatively new building(lol), and May Fete. The picture at the beginning of this blog is actually an eary May-Fete celebration. (Although not from Paris.) My great-grandma tells me the story of how when she was giving birth to my grandpa, her little sister was mad because she had to miss her senior May Fete.

Take a second to think about how the things that you do in school were done years ago by people your age who are now dead.

It's strange isn't it?

Another thing that lasts longer than life is architecture. This past summer I helped my grandpa build on to his new house. I learned a lot from this experience and I know that the house I built will stand on this earth longer than I will. It really is something to think about. Or, maybe I am just an architecture freak...

And a more abstract answer, (but not really): Faith, hope, and love. Anything that you do in this life that involves faith, hope, or love will not be lost. Your influence on others travels much farther than you ever will.

And now, these three remain.

A Random Story

^^Your unrelated caption for this post^^

So, I used to be friends with this girl who decided to make up her own dialect. She insisted upon pronouncing every "ag" sound -- like in "agriculture" -- as "ig" -- as in "big". For her, this transformed the word "bag" into "big", "flag" into "flig" and "dragon" into "drigon". I will never forget when she was trying to understand 'see you at the pole'. After explaining to her what it was, she said, "oh, the flig pole." She also believed that since some people pronounce "wash" as "worsh", then every water-related word should also be pronounced this way. Worter. The worter fountain. The worshing machine. George Worshington. Worter bottle.

She was crazy, loud, random, air-head-ish, and she fell a lot.

Now, she is a Junior in High School who almost already has sophomore status in college. Moral: don't underestimate people; don't misjudge. You never know who will end up to be what. Believe in yourself. Don't let people tell you that the things you say are weird.