Identities, what we can do to make them the best we can.

In the story of Jesus Colon, he believes that you should always offer your help no matter how you look and what kind of reputation you have. He believes that you should not let anything come to you, you must go to it. If someone asks for your help you must help them. If you see someone who needs help then you must offer your help not wait for them to ask you because the might not. It is our duty as human beings to help each other come through no matter what he/she looks like or talks like. We are one race

I think that Colon acted like a "rude animal walking on two legs". But in my opinion, I probably would have done the same thing. It is defiantly not the right thing to do. But I close my eyes and think that I was Jesus Colon, I would have been thinking the same things he was thinking about. Would she scream? I would get in real trouble then.

I think that it takes one bad event to make you a better person. In this case when Colon ignored the lady he made a promise to himself that he will always offer his help to anyone he thinks needs it. In Fatmire Feka's case it was the war and separation of her family that made her give speeches to everyone and inspire them. Now Jesus Colons walks away with a promise to keep to himself and I walk away with the knowledge on how to live by my promise.

Poem:

This Poem By James Berry really stuns me. How he used poetry as a form of making us know about difference. I dont really have an answer to these questions and I dont think there is one. A line that really gets to me is "Do we shut our eyes to it or poke it with a stick?-4th line of the poem. This relates to what we do in real life. When you see something of the unknown do you not care?-shut our eyes to it. Or do play around with it and experiment-poke it with a stick. This is exactly what we do with the unknown. This poem has many unanswered question and I dont really understand it so I cant say much about it but it is defiantly about fear of the unknown and exclusion.

The Island:

The Island is a picture book by Armin Greder and it is not so different from other picture books when you first look at it. Little words, Big pictures. But when you thing about it, there is a lot of meaning in the book. There is a huge message and I think a big idea is "fear of the unknown brings no gain" Because they see a poor stranded man with only his boat and reluctantly take him in. The are very scared of him and dont give him any food or let him out. They then banish him and build high walls around their city so no one could get in. Now what if they is disease in their community? They cant get help because they do not know anyone around them to help them because they excluded everyone else. So if you always help people, they will help you back.

Peace is a need

In her speech, Fatmire Feka talks about her past and how it affects her today. How her family is still missing and how peace could have changed all of this and what we can do to achieve total world peace. She also thinks that we need to take action. You do not have to be like her and become a leader but at least try to help with donations. Not just heartless donation in which you just drop a coin in a box, just caring will do better than that. But try to tell others about what is happening and hopefully, they will start caring to.

Feka's speech relates to John Donne's "No man is an island" because Feka wants peace. Peace means that we are together and the whole point of John Donne's poem is that man kind is not separated and can never be separated, we are all part of the big picture, none bigger than the other, like a puzzle. But I think that that puzzle is incomplete and we are the ones that have to fix it. From both the world wars and other wars before and after those we can see that that puzzle is slowly being completely. Now people like Feka, Aung San Suu Kyi and many other peace makers around the world are not trying to fix the puzzle, but are trying to make us fix the puzzle with them.

When my brother leaves overseas for some time for some reason, my mom always misses him and the moment he gets back, she says that she missed him and the next day everything goes back to normal. It would be hard to imagine if he never returned and we didn't know where he is. Feka is going through this right now and it is a lot harder than I can ever imagine. To be struck by horror that follows you because you dont know if they are alive or dead. It is much harder to have someone "missing" than someone dead because when someone is dead, you can have a funeral for them and honor their souls. But if they are missing, what can you do? Nothing.

I feel that feka is a great hero in our time because she teaches us more than to make peace, but look at her. Her family is missing and insted of being sad about it she has inspired the world by using the stories to fight against hunger, poverty and make equality with peace. Although I don't think that she would have been the person she was today if her family did not go missing. However, it still takes a great deal of strength to become where she is today. Like my blog quote "A hero is a person who can hang on for longer" Feka is a hero because she hung on for longer. And she hasn't leg go yet

.

I chose this picture painted by Rene Magritte because it shows a person who is completely oblivious to us to the left, In the middle he has turned slightly towards us so you can slightly see his face. On the right he has made a quarter turn to his right so you can see half of his face. I think that it is the peace maker goal to try to turn that person around and see what is happening to the world around him.

Is something really that great that you will sacrifice yourself and others for it?

Aung San Suu Kyi's interview for BBC talks about that the Burmese people have to do fight for democracy together. no man is an island, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.-From poem no man is an island by John Donne 1624. In my opinion, Aung San Suu Kyi is one of the greatest souls to have walked this earth. Under house arrest for 15 years. How would that feel? Lonely. Trapped. An animal in a cage. But these are all subdued by one other feeling. The feeling of hope. Hope that one day we will have democracy in Burma, knowing that day will come closer with every day that passes and we will get through those days with our blood, sweat and tears. Then, when she walked out of her house and saw all the people there for her, that hope went away and in came in knowledge.

I think that Aung San Suu Kyi is fighting for all the right reasons, but not in the right way. Do we have to use peace? Is peace really that great we must sacrifice what we are looking for? I think not. when brothers and sisters argue over something huge, sometimes we get in a fight. So what its not the end of the world. I remember this one time where me and my 15 (17 now) year old brother got into a fist fight. I was only 10. Guess who won? But he won because he was bigger. Aung San Suu Kyi is the older brother and the Burmese government is the little brother. Aung San Suu Kyi has the support of the U.N and many other countries but she is not using it to her advantage. I mean, not use all the nuclear weapons on Burma but just threatening the government of Burma to see what we can do.

What I have said on Aung San Suu Kyi could make me seem like a more negative type of person however I still admire her and her words of wisdom. Can any normal person speak on what he/she thinks is right? Can they continue on what they think is right with a gun at their head? a one way ticket to god himself. But I think that If Aung San Suu Kyi uses a little force then they will achieve what they want much quicker and not have to bear the pain and suffering any longer.

You my think that I am extremely foolish to have chosen a tomato soup can painting by Andy Warhol but I have reasons for it. Before we learnt more about Aung San Suu Kyi, did we know a lot about Burma? Maybe some of us did but I sure didnt. In this picture you can only see the front which obviously says "Campbell's condensed tomato soup" Which is the brand and product. It is the most recognizable in the picture and in real life we see the front first. But its whats on the back that matters. What the ingredients are, the expiry date and usually some more information about the product. The front is Aung San Suu Kyi because she Is the leader and is what we look at Burma for. The back is the people of Burma. They are mor important because it is what Aung San Suu Kyi is fighting for

We are together and together we are strong

I think that the theme of the poem is the fact that together we are strong. I can support this idea by the first two lines of the poem which are "No man is an island; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."So basically, it mean that no person is by his/her self. Every person is inter-connected to each other and we are one. "It is not the Human race are. It is the Human race Is." (Jon Turteltaub, 2007, National Treasures 2 :Book of secrets). Another aspect of this poem that I will review about in this post is that in the middle of the poem the line "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am part of mankind." This relates to the first line because the first line tells us that we are together. This line concerning diminished tells us that every time someone dies, it affects us all negatively because we are part of the human race. Relating this to the first line would be like each person represents a village in the continent, as John Donne describes the human race as a continent, then when one village gets destroyed in a fire and that village was helping another village to get food, then the other village will suffer for some time. In reality, if someone dies, then his/hers mother, father, siblings and other close friends/family will be in a period mourning of which they may never recover from. Therefore, I conclude that the ideas that John Donne induces in the poem is the idea of the human race as a single form and how when a piece of the form is taken off, another section may be permanently or temporally damaged.

The Video:

I personally think that this video is a great way to communicate to the world and to get your message out. It is extremely effective and I feel that getting words around the cities of New York and Sydney from the add on a billboard to the random scrunched up litter on the ground. Along with the backing track that made you feel this indescribable feeling inside yourself that made you think deeply about the words and what the mean together, which also brings in another idea that each word by itself wont make sense. Even if you are just missing one word in the whole video, It will take some time to comprehend the whole video, which I consider a loss of time. Another idea of this would be how it says "Man kind is not an island" in the poem and video but in the video, since it was filmed in two different cities which are half way across the world. In the video, you also could not tell which city was which unless there was a significant landmark. This brings in the idea of the human race being the same all over the globe. Personally, I am more a visual learner than auditory and this is one of the reasons I prefer the video to the poem.