1. Walking to the Math & Physics building 2 weeks ago, I came across a decorated table promoting a club called TOMS shoes which had a friendly and down to earth atmosphere. The TOMS shoes club is a company that sells shoes to consumers and organizes shoe drops in developing countries; following the model to give a free pair of shoes away for ever pair bought. Seeing the members so happy designing shoes for students to buy and a full donation box made me realize that a passion for humanitarianism was a strong character in the club, but likewise for me and my minor in Anthropology. Seeing such a cause I could relate to I walked over to ask a few questions and introduce myself. As I talked to one of the members, the flashback of a memory from last years Vans Warped Tour ran through my thoughts and remember wanting to get involved because along with the like-minded peers participating, I wanted to put my hands to work to make a difference for others. At this point the tent had gained a small crowd foreshadowing to me a big following of the club at UCF to come. Starting in the spring 2010 semester, I will be attending more events such as a 1-mile barefoot walk to create awareness and participate in monthly gatherings to get more involved. All thanks to the help of a table placed outside of the hustling Student Union.
2. Every other Tuesday and Thursday morning, as I'm walking to class for chemistry, my wake up walk routine is bluntly disrupted by the ear-drum shattering music of UCF's Metal Appreciation Club in fron of the Student Union. While I am a proud fan of new and progressive metal in today's music scene (not too much older works), I probably speak for a large student body by stating that such loud volume in a dense public area is quite a nuisance. I believe and respect the fact that fans want to express their culture, but I don't think it should be in a place where dozens of other clubs and organizations are trying to convey their messages to other students as well. The problem is that everyone has trouble listening to others; and at such an early time of the day, even some metal fans themselves would prefer some peace and quiet during their morning commute to class. The solution; simply relocate the Metal Appreciation Club to another area on campus, or at a later time in the day. An area per say between the Health Center & Libra where there's minimal foot traffic. Although like myself, others see the Metal Appreciation club at UCF as an insignificant one, I believe that it's a fabulous way to expand the musical horizons of any willing individual and an open-mindedness towards music leads to open-mindedness towards others perspectives & the world around you.
3. If you have ever walked near the Psychology building or by the UCF Arena, you most likely noticed Memory Lane; a large rectangular field used for events such as tailgating or a place for students to relax & play sports. Last week, I couldn't help but notice a moderate sized gathering of tents in the same area and was very intrigued by the festivities taking place such as painting, music playing, and what seemed to be a very activist oriented attitude. I learned that tent city was established by UCF's own Campus Peace Action committee and were welcoming others to join in and pitch their own tent. Their purpose was to create awareness of their motives by alternating festivity themes every night from community, to equality, environment, art, and wellness. They wanted the opportunity to reach out to others with similar thoughts and give progressives a week long voice; just a place for people to relax. A good amount of people walked by with wary looks as well as if thinking it was a massive hippie convention & all the stereotypes that came along with it. The event reminded me of being at the 2007 Langerado Music Festival in Big Cypress National Park in west Florida. The three days of music and art introduced me to quite a handful of people with whom I was able to spend time with and talk about music, ideologies, and politics. While I didn't post a tent myself, I visited my friend veronica who had set one up. Overall, my time there was quite a unique experience; I felt as if I were far away from any university or sign of civilization beyond the point of a small village.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Memoir Final
Christopher Collins
9/24/09
ENC1101- Moody
Memoir
The warning signs were all over. Even those not in the direct cone of impact were told on the news to board up & evacuate. While many adhered to the preparations, many residents in New Orleans didn't have sufficient means to leaving due to an attitude of ignorance to nature, not owning a car or having a place to go, or immobility of traffic and thus had to weather the storm out. Claimed to be the deadliest natural disaster in American history, in 2005 category 3 hurricane Katrina was on a one way path to the Mardi Gras capital of the world; New Orleans, Louisiana. For the first time in its history, the city's famous downtown Bourbon Street stood as lifeless as a ghost town. No music, no lights, no smell of beer and Cajun grilled food, no life, nothing except a wall of darkness approaching the southern tip of such a lively place by the Gulf. As if it were the clam before the storm, an all too quiet stillness approached as the last few minutes of sunshine ended its reign of the sky above. Just as the strike of an awe inspiring thunderous roar from a cloud black as night made its way through the ears of thousands, the streetlights flickered off & on and traffic lights began to swing as if a child being pushed on a swing set were about to go to high for his own good. With most people waiting out Katrina in shelters, the first blanket of rain pounded against the walls like a million knocks on the door from nature as if it were expressing its fury for all to listen. Anxious residents tuned in religiously to hand held radios & TV's for updates from the National Weather Center. Considering the below sea level of the city, the fact that its only protection of flooding from seawater was a series of levees long overdue for maintenance and even replacement for that matter, and a strategic location off the warm waters of the Gulf (which fed the power of this monstrous hurricane) all set up an equation for a disastrous day of reckoning.
Throughout the whole event I watched and listened for updates from its origins as a tropical depression off the coast of the Caribbean to it gaining massive amounts of energy from the Atlantic & temperate Gulf waters to the repercussions of its wake. I have always had a love-hate relationship with hurricane season. For some reason, I enjoyed epic grocery store trips, fortifying our home, visiting the beach and skim boarding the massive storm surge, and biking down ruined streets with mile long gas lines. I can remember all the bad associations with hurricanes as well such as flooding, death, destruction of property, and political agitation; but didn’t worry too much because I lived in a townhouse & had a downhill roof on the west side of our property and most hurricanes came from the east side of Florida. Plus we lived next to a water plant and didn’t lose power often. I remember seeing Katrina’s expected path and seeing that it would go to the Gulf of Mexico then dart back to the Atlantic. Knowing it may hit Florida from the west, my family and I began to prepare for the worst. Luckily, it winded up taking another route and only hitting south Florida as a category 1. The summer sea of the Gulf fueled the storm, which directly impacted New Orleans, Louisiana. A swampy lying metropolitan area like itself rendered defenseless as the hurricane destroyed over 50 of the constructed flood prevention levees and hurdled a wall of water straight for downtown New Orleans. One of the top 5 worst natural disasters in this country’s history, the violent storm brought an unprecedented 1,836 deaths, did over $100 billion dollars in damages and left a whole city on its knees stranded from the rest of the world lying in ruin. The waters from the Gulf engulfed 80% of the city in excess of 14ft high and did more damage than the storm itself! While the jaw-dropping statistics stand for themselves, the hurricanes significance in my eyes lies in the way it exemplified our true vulnerability to Mother Nature and offered a glimpse into a future plagued with intensive climate fluctuation due to global or anthropogenic warming. The record breaking 15 strong 2005 hurricane season stood as testament that as humans release what is now up to 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide into our planet’s atmosphere per year, we are reaching an ever-increasing imbalance of our environment that will lead to severe storms and climate change making Katrina seem like a thunderstorm. As overpopulation increases due to a high birth and low death rate and more people move to areas closer to the shore, the situation grows dyer. We as human beings must learn from this wake-up call and combine our knowledge and efforts together to ensure a safer home for generations and centuries to come.
My eyes and ears glued to the television and radio, I felt that I had dodged a bullet and was now watching it strike Louisiana. After the storm, I followed the updates on situations with FEMA and Mayor Ray Nagin in a shocking manner. I remembered how scared I had felt in 92 during Hurricane Andrew in Homestead, Fl. Only 3 years old, such violent nature left a lasting impression on me; I became infatuated with the power of nature. I thought about how many people had to leave their animals behind like my family had to leave our dog Duncan at home in Andrew. I was so worried for him; he was on my mind more than my own safety. The day after Andrew we came home to a pile of rubbish lying in a neighborhood of rubbish piles and to my surprise, Duncan arose from the midst of a trashed house out of the bathtub. He had hidden in the bathtub to avoid the storms fury and I had thought I had the smartest dog in the world! I prayed that animals in New Orleans were as fortunate.
The aftermath of the storm intrigued me probably more than the storm itself. Between the scope of damage of hurricane Katrina, looting, failure of governmental policy, seeing ordinary Joe’s banning together for rescue missions, hundreds stranded on rooftops, the clear lack of initiative in the Bush administration, and seeing thousands stranded on abandoned highways all confirmed my ideologies of human nature and encouraged me to further continue a major in Environmental Anthropology.As my dad and I were pulling boards off our house once Katrina had passed, I recall telling him “These people have been through hell for almost 3 days now and FEMA has still yet to arrive? I know Andrew was stronger but the damage in Louisiana is biblical & frightening to know America’s in no hurry to aid a city with bodies floating in the streets and thousands starving on abandoned/flooded highways.”
In Conclusion, hurricane Katrina meant way more to me than just a disaster. I have never left the state of Florida; and being that it gets more hurricane weather than any other of the 50 states storms have always fascinated me. In fact, just as I started high school, my first day in 9th grade was accompanied with a power outage and a whole day of blackened skies. That was the 2004 Hurricane Season that produced nine named hurricanes, 5 of which made landfall (Charley, Ivan, Frances, etc.) off the coast of Florida. This increasing intensity and frequency of hurricanes has driven my pursuit to understand people; and why & how we interact with our surrounding environment and to one another. It opened my eyes to the blunt realistic problems facing society today and led me to embrace a path of education to someday help me make a difference.
9/24/09
ENC1101- Moody
Memoir
The warning signs were all over. Even those not in the direct cone of impact were told on the news to board up & evacuate. While many adhered to the preparations, many residents in New Orleans didn't have sufficient means to leaving due to an attitude of ignorance to nature, not owning a car or having a place to go, or immobility of traffic and thus had to weather the storm out. Claimed to be the deadliest natural disaster in American history, in 2005 category 3 hurricane Katrina was on a one way path to the Mardi Gras capital of the world; New Orleans, Louisiana. For the first time in its history, the city's famous downtown Bourbon Street stood as lifeless as a ghost town. No music, no lights, no smell of beer and Cajun grilled food, no life, nothing except a wall of darkness approaching the southern tip of such a lively place by the Gulf. As if it were the clam before the storm, an all too quiet stillness approached as the last few minutes of sunshine ended its reign of the sky above. Just as the strike of an awe inspiring thunderous roar from a cloud black as night made its way through the ears of thousands, the streetlights flickered off & on and traffic lights began to swing as if a child being pushed on a swing set were about to go to high for his own good. With most people waiting out Katrina in shelters, the first blanket of rain pounded against the walls like a million knocks on the door from nature as if it were expressing its fury for all to listen. Anxious residents tuned in religiously to hand held radios & TV's for updates from the National Weather Center. Considering the below sea level of the city, the fact that its only protection of flooding from seawater was a series of levees long overdue for maintenance and even replacement for that matter, and a strategic location off the warm waters of the Gulf (which fed the power of this monstrous hurricane) all set up an equation for a disastrous day of reckoning.
Throughout the whole event I watched and listened for updates from its origins as a tropical depression off the coast of the Caribbean to it gaining massive amounts of energy from the Atlantic & temperate Gulf waters to the repercussions of its wake. I have always had a love-hate relationship with hurricane season. For some reason, I enjoyed epic grocery store trips, fortifying our home, visiting the beach and skim boarding the massive storm surge, and biking down ruined streets with mile long gas lines. I can remember all the bad associations with hurricanes as well such as flooding, death, destruction of property, and political agitation; but didn’t worry too much because I lived in a townhouse & had a downhill roof on the west side of our property and most hurricanes came from the east side of Florida. Plus we lived next to a water plant and didn’t lose power often. I remember seeing Katrina’s expected path and seeing that it would go to the Gulf of Mexico then dart back to the Atlantic. Knowing it may hit Florida from the west, my family and I began to prepare for the worst. Luckily, it winded up taking another route and only hitting south Florida as a category 1. The summer sea of the Gulf fueled the storm, which directly impacted New Orleans, Louisiana. A swampy lying metropolitan area like itself rendered defenseless as the hurricane destroyed over 50 of the constructed flood prevention levees and hurdled a wall of water straight for downtown New Orleans. One of the top 5 worst natural disasters in this country’s history, the violent storm brought an unprecedented 1,836 deaths, did over $100 billion dollars in damages and left a whole city on its knees stranded from the rest of the world lying in ruin. The waters from the Gulf engulfed 80% of the city in excess of 14ft high and did more damage than the storm itself! While the jaw-dropping statistics stand for themselves, the hurricanes significance in my eyes lies in the way it exemplified our true vulnerability to Mother Nature and offered a glimpse into a future plagued with intensive climate fluctuation due to global or anthropogenic warming. The record breaking 15 strong 2005 hurricane season stood as testament that as humans release what is now up to 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide into our planet’s atmosphere per year, we are reaching an ever-increasing imbalance of our environment that will lead to severe storms and climate change making Katrina seem like a thunderstorm. As overpopulation increases due to a high birth and low death rate and more people move to areas closer to the shore, the situation grows dyer. We as human beings must learn from this wake-up call and combine our knowledge and efforts together to ensure a safer home for generations and centuries to come.
My eyes and ears glued to the television and radio, I felt that I had dodged a bullet and was now watching it strike Louisiana. After the storm, I followed the updates on situations with FEMA and Mayor Ray Nagin in a shocking manner. I remembered how scared I had felt in 92 during Hurricane Andrew in Homestead, Fl. Only 3 years old, such violent nature left a lasting impression on me; I became infatuated with the power of nature. I thought about how many people had to leave their animals behind like my family had to leave our dog Duncan at home in Andrew. I was so worried for him; he was on my mind more than my own safety. The day after Andrew we came home to a pile of rubbish lying in a neighborhood of rubbish piles and to my surprise, Duncan arose from the midst of a trashed house out of the bathtub. He had hidden in the bathtub to avoid the storms fury and I had thought I had the smartest dog in the world! I prayed that animals in New Orleans were as fortunate.
The aftermath of the storm intrigued me probably more than the storm itself. Between the scope of damage of hurricane Katrina, looting, failure of governmental policy, seeing ordinary Joe’s banning together for rescue missions, hundreds stranded on rooftops, the clear lack of initiative in the Bush administration, and seeing thousands stranded on abandoned highways all confirmed my ideologies of human nature and encouraged me to further continue a major in Environmental Anthropology.As my dad and I were pulling boards off our house once Katrina had passed, I recall telling him “These people have been through hell for almost 3 days now and FEMA has still yet to arrive? I know Andrew was stronger but the damage in Louisiana is biblical & frightening to know America’s in no hurry to aid a city with bodies floating in the streets and thousands starving on abandoned/flooded highways.”
In Conclusion, hurricane Katrina meant way more to me than just a disaster. I have never left the state of Florida; and being that it gets more hurricane weather than any other of the 50 states storms have always fascinated me. In fact, just as I started high school, my first day in 9th grade was accompanied with a power outage and a whole day of blackened skies. That was the 2004 Hurricane Season that produced nine named hurricanes, 5 of which made landfall (Charley, Ivan, Frances, etc.) off the coast of Florida. This increasing intensity and frequency of hurricanes has driven my pursuit to understand people; and why & how we interact with our surrounding environment and to one another. It opened my eyes to the blunt realistic problems facing society today and led me to embrace a path of education to someday help me make a difference.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Memoir
The warning signs were all over. Even those not in the direct cone of impact were told on the news to board up & evacuate. While many adhered to the preparations, many residents in New Orleans didn't have sufficient means to leaving due to an attitude of ignorance to nature, not owning a car or having a place to go, and immobility of traffic and thus had to weather the storm out. Claimed to be the deadliest natural disaster in American history, hurricane Katrina, at the time a category 5, was on a one way path to the Mardi Gras capital of the world; New Orleans, Louisiana. For the first time in its history, the city's famous downtown Bourbon Street stood as lifeless as a ghost town. No music, no lights, no smell of beer and Cajun grilled food, no life, nothing except a wall of darkness approaching the southern tip of such a lively place by the Gulf. As if it were the clam before the storm, an all to quiet stillness approached as the last few minutes of sunshine ended its reign of the sky above. Just as the strike of an awe inspiring thunderous roar from a cloud black as night made its way through the ears of thousands, the streetlights flickered off & on and traffic lights began to swing as if a child being pushed on a swing set were about to go to high for his own good. With most people waiting out Katrina in shelters, the first blanket of rain pounded against the walls like a million knocks on the door from nature as if it were expressing its fury for all to listen. Anxious residents tuned in religiously to hand held radios & TV's for updates from the National Weather Center. Considering the below sea level of the city, the fact that its only protection of flooding from seawater was a series of levees long overdue for maintenance and even replacement for that matter, and a strategic location off the warm waters of the Gulf (which fed the power of this monstrous hurricane) all set up an equation for a disastrous day of reckoning.
In 2005 Hurricane Katrina, a category 3 hurricane that began as a category 5, struck most of the land surrounding the Gulf of Mexico. From its origins as a tropical depression off the coast of the Caribbean, it gained massive amounts of energy from the Atlantic & temperate Gulf waters. The summer sea fueled the storm, which directly impacted New Orleans, Louisiana. A swampy lying metropolitan area like itself rendered defenseless as the hurricane destroyed over 50 of the constructed flood prevention levees and hurdled a wall of water straight for downtown New Orleans. One of the top 5 worst natural disaster’s in this country’s history, the violent storm brought an unprecedented 1,836 deaths, did over $100 billion dollars in damages and left a whole city on its knees stranded from the rest of the world lying in ruin. The waters from the Gulf engulfed 80% of the city in excess of 14ft high and did more damage than the storm itself! While the jaw-dropping statistics stand for themselves, the hurricanes significance in my eyes lies in the way it exemplified our true vulnerability to mother nature and offered a glimpse into a future plagued with intensive climate fluctuation due to global, or anthropogenic warming. Global warming is said to be a natural phenomena in the scientific community presently and humans are just amplifying its effects. The record breaking 15 strong 2005 hurricane season stood as testament that as humans release what is now up to 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide into our planets atmosphere per year, we are reaching an ever-increasing imbalance of our environment that will lead to severe storms and climate change making Katrina seem like a cloudy day. As overpopulation increases due to a high birth rate and low death rate and more people move to areas closer to the shore, events like hurricane Katrina seem to foreshadow a gloomy future exponentially worse than today’s current conditions considering the variables at hand. We as human beings must learn from this wake-up call and combine our knowledge and efforts together to ensure a safer home for generations and centuries to come.
While I may not have been in Hurricane Katrina, the event meant a lot to me because as a Florida resident, I have experienced frightening scenarios like the one in New Orleans. I also plan on majoring in Environmental Biology and situations like Katrina entail massive amounts of information on our planet and how our actions impact this delicate ecosystem that’s taken billions of years to get to where it is today.
I can remember fearing Florida would be the one to get directly hit but luckily we only received the outer feeder bands of the cyclonic storm. My eyes and ears glued to the television and radio, I felt that I had dodged a bullet and was now watching it strike Louisiana. After the storm, I followed the updates on situations with FEMA and mayor Ray Nagin in a shocking manner. It made me remember how scared I had felt during Hurricane Andrew in Homestead, Fl. Such a feeling of helplessness of lying in a gymnasium evacuation post was amplified due to my childhood state of mind. I thought about how many people had to leave their animals behind like my family had to leave our dog Duncan at home. I was so worried for him that he was on my mind more than my own safety. The day after Andrew we came home to a pile of rubbish lying in a neighborhood of rubbish piles and to my surprise, Duncan arose from the midst of a trashed house out of the bathtub. He had hidden in the bathtub to avoid the storms fury and I had thought I had the smartest dog in the world! I prayed that animals in New Orleans were as witty as he was.
The aftermath of the storm intrigued me probably more than the storm itself. Between looting, failure of governmental policy, seeing ordinary Joe’s banning together for rescue missions, hundreds stranded on rooftops, the clear lack of initiative in the Bush administration, and seeing thousands stranded on abandoned highways all confirmed my ideologies of human nature and encouraged me to further continue a minor in Anthropology. As my dad and I were pulling boards off our house once Katrina had passed, I recall telling him “These people have been through hell for almost 3 days now and FEMA has still yet to arrive? I know Andrew was stronger but the scope of damage in Louisiana is biblical & frightening to know America’s taking its sweet ass time to aid a city with bodies floating in the streets and thousands starving on abandoned/flooded highways.”
In Conclusion, hurricane Katrina meant way more to me than just a disaster. I have never left the state of Florida; and being that it gets more hurricane weather than any other of the 50 states, storms and nature have always fascinated me. In fact, just as I started high school, my first day in 9th grade was accompanied with a power outage and a whole day of blackened skies. That was the 2004 Hurricane Season that produced nine named hurricanes, 5 of which made landfall (Charley, Ivan, Frances, etc.) off the coast of Florida. This increasing intensity and frequency of hurricanes has driven my pursuit to understand people; and why & how we interact with our surrounding environment and to one another. It opened my eyes to the blunt realistic problems facing society today and caused me to embrace a path of education to someday help me make a difference.
In 2005 Hurricane Katrina, a category 3 hurricane that began as a category 5, struck most of the land surrounding the Gulf of Mexico. From its origins as a tropical depression off the coast of the Caribbean, it gained massive amounts of energy from the Atlantic & temperate Gulf waters. The summer sea fueled the storm, which directly impacted New Orleans, Louisiana. A swampy lying metropolitan area like itself rendered defenseless as the hurricane destroyed over 50 of the constructed flood prevention levees and hurdled a wall of water straight for downtown New Orleans. One of the top 5 worst natural disaster’s in this country’s history, the violent storm brought an unprecedented 1,836 deaths, did over $100 billion dollars in damages and left a whole city on its knees stranded from the rest of the world lying in ruin. The waters from the Gulf engulfed 80% of the city in excess of 14ft high and did more damage than the storm itself! While the jaw-dropping statistics stand for themselves, the hurricanes significance in my eyes lies in the way it exemplified our true vulnerability to mother nature and offered a glimpse into a future plagued with intensive climate fluctuation due to global, or anthropogenic warming. Global warming is said to be a natural phenomena in the scientific community presently and humans are just amplifying its effects. The record breaking 15 strong 2005 hurricane season stood as testament that as humans release what is now up to 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide into our planets atmosphere per year, we are reaching an ever-increasing imbalance of our environment that will lead to severe storms and climate change making Katrina seem like a cloudy day. As overpopulation increases due to a high birth rate and low death rate and more people move to areas closer to the shore, events like hurricane Katrina seem to foreshadow a gloomy future exponentially worse than today’s current conditions considering the variables at hand. We as human beings must learn from this wake-up call and combine our knowledge and efforts together to ensure a safer home for generations and centuries to come.
While I may not have been in Hurricane Katrina, the event meant a lot to me because as a Florida resident, I have experienced frightening scenarios like the one in New Orleans. I also plan on majoring in Environmental Biology and situations like Katrina entail massive amounts of information on our planet and how our actions impact this delicate ecosystem that’s taken billions of years to get to where it is today.
I can remember fearing Florida would be the one to get directly hit but luckily we only received the outer feeder bands of the cyclonic storm. My eyes and ears glued to the television and radio, I felt that I had dodged a bullet and was now watching it strike Louisiana. After the storm, I followed the updates on situations with FEMA and mayor Ray Nagin in a shocking manner. It made me remember how scared I had felt during Hurricane Andrew in Homestead, Fl. Such a feeling of helplessness of lying in a gymnasium evacuation post was amplified due to my childhood state of mind. I thought about how many people had to leave their animals behind like my family had to leave our dog Duncan at home. I was so worried for him that he was on my mind more than my own safety. The day after Andrew we came home to a pile of rubbish lying in a neighborhood of rubbish piles and to my surprise, Duncan arose from the midst of a trashed house out of the bathtub. He had hidden in the bathtub to avoid the storms fury and I had thought I had the smartest dog in the world! I prayed that animals in New Orleans were as witty as he was.
The aftermath of the storm intrigued me probably more than the storm itself. Between looting, failure of governmental policy, seeing ordinary Joe’s banning together for rescue missions, hundreds stranded on rooftops, the clear lack of initiative in the Bush administration, and seeing thousands stranded on abandoned highways all confirmed my ideologies of human nature and encouraged me to further continue a minor in Anthropology. As my dad and I were pulling boards off our house once Katrina had passed, I recall telling him “These people have been through hell for almost 3 days now and FEMA has still yet to arrive? I know Andrew was stronger but the scope of damage in Louisiana is biblical & frightening to know America’s taking its sweet ass time to aid a city with bodies floating in the streets and thousands starving on abandoned/flooded highways.”
In Conclusion, hurricane Katrina meant way more to me than just a disaster. I have never left the state of Florida; and being that it gets more hurricane weather than any other of the 50 states, storms and nature have always fascinated me. In fact, just as I started high school, my first day in 9th grade was accompanied with a power outage and a whole day of blackened skies. That was the 2004 Hurricane Season that produced nine named hurricanes, 5 of which made landfall (Charley, Ivan, Frances, etc.) off the coast of Florida. This increasing intensity and frequency of hurricanes has driven my pursuit to understand people; and why & how we interact with our surrounding environment and to one another. It opened my eyes to the blunt realistic problems facing society today and caused me to embrace a path of education to someday help me make a difference.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Memoir Introduction
The warning signs were all over. The news,,, Even those not in the direct cone of impact were told on the news to board up & evacuate. While many adhered to the preparations, many residents in New Orleans didn't have sufficient means to leaving due to an attitude of ignorance to nature, not owning a car or having a place to go, and immobility of traffic and thus had to weather the storm out. Claimed to be the deadliest natural disaster in American history, hurricane Katrina , at the time a category 5, was on a one way path to the Mardi Gras. capital of the world; New Orleans, Louisiana hitting it as a category 3. For the first time in its history, the city's famous downtown Bourbon Street stood as lifeless as a ghost town. No music, no lights, no smell of beer and Cajun grilled food, no life, nothing except a wall of darkness approaching the southern tip of such a lively place by the Gulf. As if it were the clam before the storm, an all to quiet stillness approached as the last few minutes of sunshine ended its reign of the sky above. Just as the strike of an awe inspiring thunderous roar from a cloud black as night made its way through the ears of thousands, the streetlights flickered off & on and traffic lights began to swing as if a child being pushed on a swing set were about to go to high for his own good. With most people waiting out Katrina in shelters, school gymnasiums, and stadiums, the first blanket of rain pounded against the walls like a million knocks on the door from nature as if it were expressing its fury for all to listen. Anxious residents tuned in religiously to hand held radios & TV's for updates from the National Weather Center. Considering the below sea level of the city, the fact that its only protection of flooding from seawater was a series of levees long overdue for maintenance and even replacement, for that matter, and a strategic location off the warm waters of the Gulf which fed the power of this monstrous hurricane all set up an equation for a disastrous day of reckoning. Hurricane Katrina stood as testament to our country's vulnerability to mother nature and arising climate changes devastating potential.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Memoir Assignment 1
Christopher Collins
9/1/09
ENC 1101 (Central Idea for Essay)
Hurricane Katrina
In 2005 Hurricane Katrina, a category 3 hurricane that began as a category 5, struck most of the land surrounding the Gulf of Mexico. From its origins as a tropical depression off the coast of the Caribbean, it gained massive amounts of energy from the northwest in the temperate seas of the Gulf. The warm waters fueled the storm, which directly impacted New Orleans, Louisiana. A swampy lying metropolitan area like itself rendered defenseless as the hurricane destroyed over 50 of the constructed flood prevention levy’s and hurdled a wall of water straight for downtown New Orleans. One of the top 5 worst natural disaster’s in this country’s history, the violent storm brought an unprecedented 1,836 deaths, did over $100 billion dollars in damages and left a whole city on its knees stranded from the rest of the world lying in ruin. The waters from the Gulf engulfed 80% of the city in excess of 14ft high and did more damage than the storm itself! While the jaw-dropping statistics stand for themselves, the hurricanes significance in my eyes lies in the way it exemplified our true vulnerability to mother nature and offered a glimpse into a future plagued with intensive climate fluctuation due to global, or anthropogenic warming. Global warming is said to be a natural phenomena in the scientific community presently and the public discourse of global warming has actually stemmed from humans acceleration of the process by massive wasting of carbon dioxide. The record breaking 15 strong 2005 hurricane season stood as testament that as humans release what is now up to 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide into our planets atmosphere per year, we are reaching an ever-increasing imbalance of our environment that will lead to severe storms and climate change making Katrina seem like a normal thunderstorm. As overpopulation increases due to a high birth rate and low death rate and more people move to areas closer to the shore, events like hurricane Katrina seem to foreshadow a gloomy future exponentially worse than today’s current conditions considering the variables at hand. We as human beings must learn from this wake-up call and combine our knowledge together to ensure a safer home for generations and centuries to come. In the coming years, changes and shifts towards the ways we use our planets resources will spark global awareness and better prepare us for natural disasters as well as human-related catastrophes.
NASA’s ‘Pathfinder’ lands on Mars- 1997
NASA’s ‘Pathfinder’ landing on Mars was a monumental step in mankind’s walk up the ladder of intelligence. The purpose for sending the micro-rover to Mars was obviously to collect samples, take pictures, and measure atmospheric and geologic factors of the red planet. The not so obvious mission was to prove NASA’s commitment to make space exploration as cheap as any other space program on Earth. Including mission operations and the launch vehicle, the whole mission came out to be about $280 million dollars. Since the day I could speak, I have dreamed just as much if not more than any other human being of space exploration and fascinated by the idea of an age where space colonization existed. Progress in space exploration, in a sense, gives the people of the world unity; space is in my opinion what can bring this world together. I feel space exploration is essential to the human species and it his something we’ve been attempting for thousands of years; and we’re not going to stop now.
The World Wide Web becomes readily available to public in 1992
The establishment of the Internet marked a new era of communication that forever changed the way we live and coincide with each other. I can remember being not even 10 when my family got WEBTV, and how amazing I found it to e-mail my penpal given to me in elementary school who lived in Canada. It gave me a lot of insight on how people live up North. This was simply representing what the internet has done worldwide; give people knowledge on everything and anything they wished. I believe we have built a society whose infrastructure is so weaved into a quilt of web pages that in its absence havoc would be wreaked upon, economies would crash, and life as we know it would take a turn downhill.
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