Tuesday, April 22, 2014

How capable is your spirit?

Gregorio Gomez

English 102


Mr. Dewit
Spirituality


Ones spirituality can go so far depending on the person and what they believe in. When I hear the word Spirit the first thing that comes to my head is peace, meditation, one with the earth. It can also make you a good person in the world and teach you the right from wrong. Spirit to me is who you are in the inside what you believe in. Me personally I believe in god and I know that if there is a god then the devil is around to. That’s the way I was taught, good and bad. I feel as if I have a good spirit I know my rights and wrongs from situations I’ve been in and I am always there to help anyone in need even if I do not know them. Aspects of this is putting yourself in others shoes when somebody has a problem or is in a situation, do not jump into conclusion and say something that will not be helpful to them you need to look at it from their angle or point of view. It’ll show that you are not afraid to share another persons problem and you are willing to fix it with them, that will make others see you as a good and have a big spirit for others and yourself. Religion, Aspect and Range are three ideas that can tie each other down. Aspect in how you look at your religion, others might believe in the same god or ritual, but will see it in another way or maybe praise it in a different way. Range can be how far your willing to go with your religion, you can go to join a group or try to persuade people to join yours. Lastly the way you act upon certain people. I act my normal self how I am everyday calm, chill, if there is a joke out there I will go along with it. I tell people what they do not want to hear because it is the truth, I’m always opened minded and free spirited with boundaries. Spirituality is the person inside you not the person people know outside, it is the inner you.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Re-due Midterm assignment: Essay

The Wealth Inequality in America video we all saw shocked everybody. The poor no where in the radar and the middle class barley even distinguishing itself from the poor is wrong. The distribution of money is to unfair and it needs to change. How to change it, I honestly don't know. Since the 1% that everyones been hearing about has almost half the states money, do we sit him down and have a talk to him about moving some of his stash to the left? If the 1% has all the money then he should get taxed more instead of the same as every other class.

One of the problems the poor are having is basically everything, but most important the education kids are getting in the local poor districts. Public education is really bad, where students do mot have any supplies such as books, pencils, even desks to sit on. Most schools have their students sitting on the floor, I understand if it was kinder garden but higher levels like 2nd, 3rd and up thats not right, Public education have tried to fundraise, but since they are in a poor local district it is hard for them. 1) because of parents not having time or enough money to donate. 2) parents are working two jobs or are not working at all. The poor need money to be distributed to their side of the chart more than anything. Public education is just one of the problems the poor are having, others like Prison Complexes are starting to fall and might be getting shut down.

Prison Industrial Complexes have been debating if they should release the prisoners and put them on house arrest. Only the petty theft prisoners not the crazy first degree murder prisoners. Reasons why they might do this is because prisons don't have enough money to keep all the prisoners inside. 5% of the worlds population is 25% of prisoners, Latino Americans: 16.3 African Americans: 13%. It has been a 50-50 if they should really let them on probation. One prisoner can cost more than 24 thousand because of healthcare and if that prisoner were to escape, thats money that the complex has lost. How can prison complex create more prisons if "all the money is at 1% hand". The wealthy class might not have a problem, but the rich, middle and poor do which means prisoners back in the street.

Health care is finally now Affordable to anybody, which is everybody thats wants it. If you do not have health care but the end of the dead line you will have to pay a fine by the end of the month. Its better to have health care than to pay a fine that is not benefiting you in anyway. HIPPA is the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the goal of the law is to make it easier for people to keep health insurance, to protect the confidentiality and security of healthcare information and help the healthcare industry control administrative costs. In the US a patient has the right to 1)get a copy of your health and claim records within 30 days of the request 2) Request Confidential communications 3) File complaints when ever they feel in their insurance has been violated. Even non-documented immigrants have the eligibility to apply. For example, in Cuba they give free health insurance any one because they consider it to be a human right . The only requirement for people that are not from cuba is to become a citizen in their country. If you ever decide to leave the country one day you can actually take that health care with you to anywhere you go. The gov. sent out troops to Cuba as a project to verify if it was true, so he sent out troops, once they got there they were asked to become citizens to get free health care because it is considered a human right. Once they came back to the US their healthcare came back with them. It is great that we can all have health care at a affordable cost.

Jobs being outsourced is one of the worst decisions anyone can do. I mean, yea more money and product are made for cheaper pay, what about the people losing their jobs. If the money from the right can be magically pass to the left by tomorrow more jobs will be made in an instant. Out sourcing to other countries for lower pa is brutal 10 cents an hour, $1 per hour hour no one can live of that. Outsourcing saves millions with low waged jobs, this also increases the ability to pay back the US debt which can promote better country relationships. Out sourcing also uses the tax money to pay back debts that they might have with the US. Things maybe different out there with the living conditions, but here people struggle a lot, $8.00-$9.00 jobs take you no where and you may have to put in exhausting hours hours. Now that it has been outsourced other people in other countries are doing the same, but for less. The government needs to think about how this is affecting his own people and not how it will benefit him personally in a good way.

Other problems the middle and poor class are having is mortgage crisis. People have been losing their homes one by one. The houses value goes down by a lot to the point where they are really getting ripped off. People have gone homeless because of this situation. No job means no money to rent or buy a house, which can lead to homelessness and more people keep going under water with their houses. The bank can then buy the house or own it depending the situation and they buy it for cheap price. The bank sells the house for more and gets more money of it, until they collapse which has happened and they go into bail-out, where we gave them money to stay a float and not go into a downfall where they would have no chance in coming back up.

The system we have in this country is not correct. They say, "we care about the people", but make no changes. To live the "Good American Dream" does one must suffer to achieve it or is there a easy route to take. How can we achieve something when it is getting pushed away from us, do we literally start from the bottom to get to the top? One way I think to make the stash of cash go to the left is to have all the rich, wealthy and especially the 1% to try to live one day just to see how the poor live. Maybe that will change and open their minds up a a little that there are people suffering and barely pulling through.

The 1% is mostly what we should all focus on. The wealthy looks like a middle class compared to the 1%. If the money were to be distributed correctly more jobs would be created a long time ago. Their would be more supplies in public schools, Industrial Prison Complexes would not think about letting prisoners go back in to the streets and most importantly jobs would not be outsourced and people would have to struggle. The 1% would have to pay more taxes more all of that to happen, but how much can one pay when they have half the countries money in their palm. In my opinion a new system would have to be made, but I know for a fact everyone will not agree with that.

Friday, March 7, 2014

Final Draft: The Absolute True Dairy of A Part-Time Indian


Gregorio Gomez
3/1/2014
Mr. DeWit
English 102

Absolute True Dairy of A Part-Time Indian

How can you succeed when you were born to fail? What kind of future can you have when all you see around you is failure. Motivation comes from within ones heart or mind, if you have a goal you will do anything and overcome everything in your path no matter how hard it is. Making a simple decision can create an obstacle that you may have to take down in the future, regretting it shows how strong you are inside, but overcoming the obstacle shows how strong you are inside and outside. In the Absolute True Diary of A Part-Time Indian by Alexie Sherman Junior or Arnold shows how strong he is through out his depressing and tough moments. He shows courage and fear at the same time knowing he can overcome these obstacles. Junior goes through deaths and loses his friend when thinking about his future. Growing up in nothing but failure can destroy someone mentally and can only make one think if there is more out there for them or is this all they are going to have for the rest of their life.

Junior never really thought about his future as much, he was not worried about it, but he knew where he stood. Junior can see all the poverty around him all the poor families that were exactly like him or even worse. Junior was not a popular guy where he lived in the reservation he was more like the opposite, he was a loser and he knew it. He would always get picked on and get into fights. The worst fight he was in was when the bully made him beat up himself, “One bully, Micah, made me beat up myself. Yes, he made me punch myself in the face three times.”(Alexie 64) As you can see he is not a good fighter. He never knew how to fight, but he never backed down no matter who it was. Junior never got advice from anyone or any good advice that he would consider thinking about until he met a very strange man, his teacher Mr. P. Mr. P in my opinion helped junior make the first move in changing his life, it didn’t start off good, but Mr. P looked inside himself and wanted to make a change and help Junior to get out of the rez “You can’t give up, you won’t give up. You threw that book at my face because you refuse to give up” (Alexie 44). If it was not for Mr. P’s truthful words Junior would of never realized what kind of future he would of had if he didn’t make the move he did which was leaving the reservation. He would be another average Indian living in poverty doing nothing with his life. Junior had analyzed his life at that very moment and became a new Indian kid.

A life decision he made was moving to a new school and leaving the reservation. That was courageous of him where he knew everything was going to change. Moving to Reardan was the scariest thing to him ever. He was surrounded by transparent white kids that he had nothing in common with. Their style of clothes was different, the way they looked and even their english was different from his even though it was the same language. Nothing happened to him for a couple of days, until the second week. In my eyes Junior felt as if he was at the reservation again he started to get called names by the transparent kids and got in to a fight. Now this was nothing to Junior it was child's play he had already been bullied so it did not affect him and ignoring it was easy. Junior had already lost his best friend Rowdy who would protect him in any fight so he knew if anything ever happened he would have to stick up for himself. The next day he got into a fight, how do you, a skinny “L” shaped kid fight off a big, tall and strong white boy? Junior was in a situation where he needed a miracle where the gods of heaven can send him Rowdy his best friend to help him. The last thing I thought Junior would do was hit the guy and that was the first thing he did. In that scene I realized that Junior was not just a risk taker, but he was crazy in the head. That whole act of courage and heroics saved him and got him respect from everybody from that point on.

Junior was not facing any problems at Reardan he met a girl he liked named Penelope and became good friends with her until he experienced one of the hardest death he would of never wanted to think of and that was his grandma. At this moment he hated everything and everybody. I thought to myself how does one over come a grandmothers death especially when she gets killed by a drunk diver. In this scene Arnold matures and becomes bold because his grandmas last dying wish was to forgive the man. Anyone in this world can forgive, but never forget. For someone to go on days, weeks and months losing someone that everybody cares about can really destroy you mentally. It can make a person give up on what they were chasing for in the first place. Junior on the other hand continued he was not just going to quit and stop on everything he worked for he was to far ahead to even think about it. He was now going to make something of himself while going to Reardan, but he was not going to do it for himself now, he was going to do it for his grandma.

One of my favorite scenes in the book is when both Junior and Rowdy climb the tallest pine tree in the reservation. Knowing that Junior was scared he still did it. Rowdy as always was the brave one. “I spit on my hand and rubbed them together and reached for the first branch.”(Alexie 225) While climbing higher and higher the branches would start to get thinner. Both Junior and Rowdy did not stop they kept going, they both stopped at The Summit, close to the top because the branches were to thin to step on. For both Junior and Rowdy to climb the tallest pine tree in the rez made them fearless. They did not care about the consequences all they cared about was that they both made it together and even if they both fell down, I do not think they would of minded as long as they were next to each other everything was fine. While Junior was up there he saw his whole reservation, and thought how beautiful it looked, “ We could see our entire world. And our world, at the moment, was green and golden and perfect”(Alexie 226). He was appreciating what he had in life at that very moment and maybe saw what his grandma was seeing all these years and that was the value of what one has at that very moment.

A scene that connects to the pine tree is at the end of the book. When both Junior and Rowdy play basketball until the dark sky cannot turn any darker. Rowdy finally accepts Juniors move to Reardan and realizes that it was either him or Junior that was going to move out. Rowdy always knew it was going to be Junior. Why, because Rowdy never got the same motivation or the same talk Mr. P gave Junior. Rowdy realizes how great it was to be Juniors friend and questions their friendship, “Will we still know each other when we’re old men I asked. Who knows anything? Rowdy asked”(Alexie 230) The reason why that sentence right there ties up to the whole book is because no one knows whats going to happen in life. Both of these boys have realize life is not what you expect and it is better to enjoy the little thing while you can because you never know what can happen at that moment. Maybe Junior and Rowdy stayed friends maybe not, the important thing is that they have each other right now and nothing can separate them from each other. 

How does one succeed without taking risks. How far can you go without making choices? Taking the other path instead of the same path others take can create new beginnings. Being curious and scared is probably the best thing you can feel when you have a goal, once you achieve it you won’t regret it, the best thing anyone can feel is happiness. They say dreams are only in your sleep, I don’t think that’s true. Anybody can reach a dream just by chasing it, even when they are awake.

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Sample Papers

Out of the three sample papers, in my opinion number one was best one. In his first paragraph he asks us how can someone overcome their obstacles, why they are put in that certain situation. After he tells us, Junior feels everything he does is wrong, but doesn't want to end up like the rest of his clan and wants more for himself and doesn't want them to feel disappointed in him, but he won't give up in changing himself. Every time the writer spoke about the book or a scene in the book he always had a quote from that scene which made me visualize what he was trying to tell me and his transactions were good. It was an ok convincing paper, the writer kept talking about the horse burning and drowning and would also relate it to Junior in the current problems he was going through which made it more interesting to know what was going to happen next after the horse disappeared. His topic sentence in the beginning was good because the questions that he asked went with it and it transacted well. Through out the whole paper Junior had to analyze and think carefully what his next move was going to be and what the consequences were, all of that led back to his topic. 

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Native American tribes

source: Historyonthenet 2000-2013
Tribe: Cherokee
Static: Hunter-gathers
Leader: Sequoyah
  • Made up of seven different clans
  • Usual shelter was cane and mud plaster huts
  • Women were in charge of the home and land
  • Men were in charge of hunting for food and protecting the camp
  • Grew corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers
  • Used canoes
  • 1821 Sequoyah invented the Cherokee alphabet
  • 1838-9 moved west to Oklahoma (Trail of Tears - 4000+ died on the 800 mile journey)

Tribe: Black Foot
Static: Hunter-gathers
Leader: Crowfoot

  • Made up of several different groups
  • Usual shelter was a tipi
  • Women were in charge of the home and owned the tipi
  • Men were in charge of hunting for food and protecting the camp
  • Polygamy was usual
  • Reliant on the buffalo
  • Performed Sun Dance in the summer
  • Mid 1800s many killed by smallpox
  • 1870 200 killed in the Marias Massacre

Tribe: Cheyenne
Static: Hunter-gathers
Leader: Black Kettle

  • Made up of ten different bands
  • Allied with Arapaho and Sioux
  • Usual shelter was a tipi
  • Women were in charge of the home and owned the tipi
  • Men were in charge of hunting for food and protecting the camp
  • Reliant on the buffalo
  • 1864 Cheyenne were among those slaughtered in the Sand Creek Massacre
  • 1876 Northern Cheyenne took part in the Battle of the Little Bighorn
  • 1877 Many forced to Oklahoma those that resisted were shot

Tribe:Apache
Static:hunter-gathers
Leader:Geronimo, Cochise


  • Made up of several different groups
  • Lived in extended family units
  • Usual shelter was a dome-shaped lodge called a wickiup
  • Polygamy was allowed but rarely practised
  • Reliant on the buffalo
  • Frequent disputes with the Comanches led to their weakening in the 1700s
  • Traded with the Pueblas in Mexico or raided Spanish villages for goods and horses
  • 1861 conflict between Apaches led by Cochise and Americans in protest at being forced onto reservations
  • 1874 a group of Apaches led by Geronimo escaped capture and fled to Mexico
  • 1886 Geronimo forced to surrender and taken to Fort Marion in Florida

Tribe:Panwee
Static:Hunter Famers
Leader: --

  • Made up of four different bands
  • Usual shelter was an earth lodge but used tipis when hunting
  • Women were in charge of the home
  • Men were in charge of hunting for food and protecting the camp
  • Many killed by smallpox and cholera in the mid 1800s 
  • 1825 recognised supremacy of US government
  • 1830-1860 - gave up increasing amounts of land to US government
  • Many Pawnee became scouts for the US government
  • 1876 Moved to Oklahoma reservation

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census (2000 census).
Top 10 Native American Tribes today.
  1. Cherokee population: 308,013
  2. Navajo population: 285,476
  3. Choctaw population: 158,374
  4. Sioux population: 153,360
  5. Chippewa population: 99,833
  6. Apache population: 96,833
  7. Blackfeet population: 85,750
  8. Iroquois population: 80,822
  9. Pueblo population: 74,085
  10. Creek population: 71,310

Sunday, February 2, 2014

State of Union

Watching Obama's State of Union speech and listening to everything he had to say had me really interested. This was the first time I ever watched something like this. One of the topics that he spoke about caught my attention, Obama said that he will raise wages up to ten dollars in perspective that is a very good idea because it's hard already to find a minimum wage job, now that the wage is getting raised workers can know apply to jobs knowing that they will start at a good pay. He also said "no single parent should live in the U.S stressed about rent, we are in 2014 it's an embarrassment" that right should me that he is trying to make changes and feels the pain of all the single parents out there.