Relationship to Place

What is your relationship with place?

This question can be interpreted in many different ways because of the simple fact that it is so vague. When I first read this question, the first thing that came to my mind was what does the word "place" mean in the context of the question. To me, it means something more than just the literal term of the word "place". To me, "place" is a sense of knowing ones self and knowing who you are in this world. To know who you are in this world is a very important thing. To truly know ones self is a hard thing to do. To fully know and understand who and why we are who we are.

My relationship with place is knowing where I stand in the big picture of things. Knowing who you care for and who truly cares for you.Knowing who the people who actually care for you and serve a purpose and meaning in your own life. Knowing and actually understanding that family is one of the most important things that anyone can ever live for. Knowing your place in life is also knowing how you want to impact the people around you while you are on this Earth. Once someone knows their sense of place, they can take into action and do what they are "meant to do" to better everyone else around them.

Someone without a sense of place is someone who is in a sense, "lost" to what is important in this world. Without having a sense of your own place it is near impossible to truly fulfill that persons full potential of sharing that sense of place with others.

Sense of Place

Why do you think it's important to have a sense of place?

It is important to have a sense of place because having a sense of place establishes who you are as a person. Someone without a sense of place might be someone who doesn't know what they want to do with their life or someone who doesn't know what is truly important in life. To me, having a sense of place means knowing where you stand in life and what you can do because of where you stand in life. To me, my sense of place is to do more for others than what I do for myself. I involve myself with a mission trip to Tijuana, Mexico, where we build a house for a family who doesn't have one. The "family" we built for last year was a 14 year old sister who takes care of her 11 year old brother and 8 year old sister. After the week was over and the house was built, my sense of place felt like it was complete for the time being. After the house was complete; to see the smiles on the kids faces, is an emotion that can not be explained. If it wasn't for my sense of place I wouldn't have had the experience that I had down there in Mexico. So, having a sense of place can, in the long run, help others who are not as fortunate as us.

Promotional Piece 2

Remembrance of Soldiers and Sailors

When walking on College Green up towards Court and State street everyday, I would always pass a type of monument with statues of people in old military uniforms. I never gave it much thought to what the monument could be in memory of until I was assigned this campus history project. I decided to do this project on the Soldier’s and Sailor’s Monument of Athens and to my dismay I found that the monument had far more greater meaning than I could convey. Knowing nothing about the monument I started to do research and I found that its purpose for existing actually had a meaningful purpose to me. After researching why the monument is there I then had to think of how I was going to portray it the way the citizens who built it wanted it to be seen as. I figured making a little book promotional piece was perfect because of the order of information I wanted to present to the audience and I thought it would make my readers aware and understand why the monument was put into place. I also had to decide who I wanted my audience for the promotional piece to be.

Choosing an audience was probably the hardest thing that I had to decide to appeal to but then it hit me. I was too worried about who was going to be my audience and why, instead of just realizing that anyone who walks past the monument everyday and has no idea what it is there for, is the audience who I wanted to appeal to. The audience that I am trying to appeal to is the same person that I am. I had no idea why that monument was there, but now that I do, I can honestly say that I have appreciation for why it is there. Anyone who doesn’t know anything about the monument can pick up my promotional book and get a sense of understanding as to why it is there.

The first decision that I had to make was how I was going to promote my piece in a way that made my audience understand and appreciate why the monument is there at all. I decided to make a little book to portray the meaning of the monument. The reason that I decided to make the entire book black and white was to better portray the time period in which the monument was made and to give the audience a sense of when the history behind the monument occurred. When you first look at the cover of the book it states the title of the monument and a picture to show what is about to be inside of the book. As the reader goes through it they will first be shown a dispatch showing the government calling citizens from Athens to war. The next page displays when and why the monument was put into place. On the last page of the book it shows two pictures of plaques that were placed on the monument to better illustrate what the monument stood for. What’s most important about all of these pages in relation to the audience reading it, is the order of information on each page and why I wanted the reader to see what they saw when they did.

The reason I found it important to place the information where I did was so that the reader was brought into a sense of completely understanding and appreciating the purpose of the monument. With my promotional piece being a book, I knew that when flipping through the pages the reader must go in order of the pages and not just flip through without a care in the world. I decided to use this to my full advantage. I didn’t want to start my book with why the monument was put into place because I wanted to give a little bit of the story behind it. I wanted the reader to see in order of what happened first. I felt that if I put when the monument was made on the first page, the reader wouldn’t fully appreciate why it was built. After the cover page I posted a picture of a dispatch that was sent out stating that the government needed troops to fight for the Civil War. After the dispatch page I moved on to when the monument was built. Also on this page are pictures of the soldiers, sailors, and cavalryman portrayed during the civil war. On the last page I decided to place pictures of two different plaques that stated the quote underneath each picture. I did this on the last page to sum up the emotion of the piece which hopefully is that of remembrance, respect and appreciation of the soldiers who died fighting for our country. I placed the information on each page specifically because I wanted the reader to find a sense of appreciation like I did when I was researching my topic.

I will no longer be one of those students who walk by the Soldier’s and Sailor’s Monument and wonder what the purpose of that piece is. I tried at the best I could to try and develop a certain mood after reading the little book. I placed certain information on certain pages because I wanted the reader to follow it as if it was being told to them from a story tellers point of view. I hope that when the reader turns to the last page that they have a sense of understanding and appreciation for the men who fought and died for our country. I hope they also find it very interesting to be living in a town where they were only asked to volunteer 200 able bodied men but instead Athens volunteered 2,610 men and because of that the Soldier’s and Sailor’s Monument was put into place. The reason I portrayed my promotional piece the way I did was because the monument was made to be remembered and I feel that kids like me do not even know what it is or what it stands for. My promotional piece was put together the way it was to hopefully convey some sort of emotion that stood for remembering those who had died. I know I’ll never walk by it again and not think of all those men it is in honor of.

Matt Tasker

Final Essay #2

Matthew Tasker

Sam Mudd

English 151

March 17 2011

The Future

Thinking about the future is a fun concept because no one can or ever will know exactly what the future will be like. Before the new millennium everyone thought that by the year 2000 there would be flying cars and spaceships flying all around the sky. Obviously that was not the case. In fact today’s society is nothing like what people thought it was going to be. People envisioned a society that was sustainable and envisioned a way of living sustainably. When someone asks somebody else to envision the future and asks them what they see everybody else’s answers are going to be completely different from anybody else’s. If someone were to ask me what the future was going to look like it would not take me long to figure how I would answer them.

Because of today’s society and everyone is wanting to live a better and healthier life someone who was asked what they thought about the future might be something like a society where we are completely sustainable and the Earth is sustainable. We as a society are trying to rush towards a society of complete sustainability, but is that even possible. My idea of our future is something that is the complete opposite of what we as a society are striving for.

We as people feel that we can change our environment and make everything better like the way it used to be. People think that if they change their ways of living that the Earth will go back to normal and everything will be ok. Yes, I do agree that we as people environmentally contributed to what the world is like nowadays but I feel like we are not the sole reason as to why it is how it is. In my envision of the future society will no longer exist and world order will be a thing of the past. We will one day run out of the fossil fuels that we rely on to do everything for us. Everyone always says it but I do not think that anyone actually realizes it. In my future we will have to find another form of reuseable energy because what we use now will one day not exist. Society thinks that if they recycle a can or pick up a piece of trash that it is actually making a difference. I’m not saying that it is a bad thing to do but what I am saying is that doing that will not save us from the devastating future that we are headed towards.

In my future we as a society in America will eventually have enough with our government and the people will stand up to all the deceit and corruption. It will be a revolution. What will happen and what will come of the revolution I am not able to say at the moment, but there will be a revolution because the people will eventually have enough and stand up and fight about it. With all the rights that we have we are actually losing them all of the time. The people will finally realize it and stand up and fight about it. As far as the environment is concerned, I think that we will use up all that we need to survive and because of that we will need to find a better and easier way of living. People feel that we contribute to all the devastating natural disasters that occur but to me all of what is going on in the environment is just one big cycle. People need to realize that we take advantage of living on this Earth because we feel that we are the most dominant. What we do not realize is that the Earth can get rid of us if it ever wanted to. We have no control as to what the environment does. The environment changes. It always has and it always will. People do not realize that about every thousand years or so that the Earth has gone through some sort of ice age. We just so happen to be living here when the Earth has decided that it wants to change how it has been.

In my future I envision a world where the environment showed us who was boss and because of it our way of living will be completely different. I do not want to sound like I am portraying a movie where the environment goes haywire and kills everyone but the environment is changing and there really is not too much we can do about it.

Final Essay #1

Matthew Tasker

Sam Mudd

English 151

March 17 2011

Media on Society

Imagine a world where we as a society chose exactly what we wanted to stand for. Imagine a world where there wasn’t always someone constantly telling us what to do or how to react to certain situations. Imagine a world where ideas of sustainability were controlled by the people. This is a world that does not exist and will never be able to exist. Doesn’t this world already exist you ask? How can someone say that we as a society do not choose what we want to stand behind? How can someone say that we as a society do not have our own forms of sustainability? I am able to tell you this because of one simple answer. The answer to that is media. The media influences us as a society to have their ways of sustainability. We are influenced everyday by what the media is saying. Without the media society and our idea of sustainability would be completely different.

I am not saying that the media is a bad thing. The media informs the public of what is going on in the world. Without the media we as a society would have no idea as to what was going on beyond our own backyards. Yes, the media influences us to stand behind and do certain things but imagine a world without the media. Would it be a better place? I do not think that without the media that our world would be any better of a place, but if we did not have media the world that we live in would be completely different. Without media our world would be something very blain and boring. Sure, the media keeps us informed of what is going on around us but it also is something that entertains society. If we did not have the media to turn to what would we as a society do? What would we as a society stand behind? What would our culture be like? How different would it all really be?

The media influences us to do all sorts of things. They enforce and stand behind what our government says. They also go against what our government is saying because they want to give us another opinion on what else could be. They have influenced us to follow along with the “going green” movement. Back in the day they influenced us to smoke because back then it was the “in” and “cool” thing to be doing. In today’s society they are now making commercials that show how bad cigarettes are. Before, everyone smoked. It was the thing to do. In society today, smoking is no longer the “cool” or “in” thing to be doing. This just goes to show how strong the media is when it has to deliver a message that they want everyone to hear. Could this be what the media is actually for?

Yes, the media informs us about what is going on in the world but that is not the main concern of the media’s. In my opinion, and that’s all it really is, is that the media’s sole purpose for even existing is to influence and pursuade society to follow what they are saying. If it was not for the media society’s idea of sustainability would not be that of what it is right now. The media wants to have an impact on what they say. They want society to do what they say. They want this because they want to have complete control over society.

They want to have complete control over society because they want to be in charge. If the media loses control of society and the media loses control of the power to have people go along with what they say then to have media at all would be pointless. In the media’s mind they have to exist. They have to be putting in their input because they need people to follow and go along with it. If they didn’t society’s idea of sustainability would be different than what the media’s idea of sustainability was. Media does influence us on our ways of sustainability. For someone to say that they do not would be like saying the sun will not rise tomorrow. We as a society are influenced every single day by what the media says. It’s been like that for years and it will continue to be like that as long as we as a society have something like media.

Eco Event #7

I found this article on a website called live-like-a-german.com. On this website they have articles on how to "live" like a German.

The title of this article is "Hamburg going green, a model to Europe". I wanted to find an article that stated what other countries were doing to "go green". All we ever hear about is what people from our country are doing to better the environment but I wanted to see what everyone else was doing. In this article it states how this city in the country of Germany is making an incentive to become even more ecological. The city is planning over 200 events and projects for its year as European Green Capital.

I thought it was cool how one country was trying to get involved so that they could influence all the other places around them to join in on the movement. I am not too sure if our country is doing anything like that but if we are not I think that we definitely should be.

Eco Event #6

I found this article on a cite called newscientist.com. On this website they have articles about how certain ways that we live effect everything around us.

The title of this article is called " car exhaust fumes cause lightning strikes ". This reason I chose this article was of course because of its title. It stuck out to me because never in my day have I heard anyone say that car exhaust can cause lightning. I had to hear it for myself. It says that during the working week air pollution rises because of all the cars on the road. It says that this effect has been seen to modify rainfall patterns both at the weekend and during the week. It causes large uplifts of air and bigger clouds. It states that lightning strikes have increased by 25% in areas of high pollution during the working week. I thought all of this was very interesting because all we ever hear about is how car exhaust is bad for our ozone and what will happen in the future. With this, it is happening now. People need to realize that they are having an effect that is happening now and not something that is happening in the future. People need to realize this and change their ways of living because of it.

Eco Event #5

I found this article on a cite called naturalnews.com. On this website they have articles on all kinds of "eco-event" type articles. All the way from reusable energy to whats going on in Japan.

The title of the article is "Hawaiian ocean water could be used to produce reusable energy". In this article it discusses how they believe that on the downwind side of the island that the water there could be turned into a reusable and renewable energy source. It even stated that they believe some of the plants that grow in the Hawaiian waters could power heat engines. OTEC or Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion is the process they believe they can use with the Hawaiian waters. The process works where a heat engine is installed and warm water is at the top and cold is underneath. When these two transfer into each other they move the turbines inside to create electricity.

I thought it was great that we are still trying to find new ways to produce energy. People are so glued down to the fossil fuels that we do not realize that we are able to use simple things such as water to produce energy. I think this find is great and that we should continue to look in places that we would least expect to find reusable energy sources.

Eco Event #4

I found this article on a website called independent.co.uk. Here they discuss different articles about Haiti and what is still going on there.

I wanted to find an article on Haiti because although it did not happen all that long ago the spotlight has shifted away from Haiti and on to other places. I thought it would be interesting to hear what is still going on there. The title of the article is "Haiti was forgotten too soon". This title caught my eye because I realized that it was true how the spotlight on Haiti had moved away. What people do not realize is that just recently an outbreak of cholera has struck the island of Haiti. It has already killed 250 people and is expected to kill many more. In to the thousands they said. I realize that other countries need our help but I do not think that we should completely shift our attention away from the country of Haiti because they still are in pain and they still need our help.

Eco Event #3

I found this article on a website called articles.latimes.com. It provides articles on many different kinds of "eco-events".

The title of this article is "Wind Turbines could more than meet U.S. electricity needs". When I first read this title it caught my attention because everyone always talks about how we need to find another re-usable energy source but then why does no one ever talk about using wind turbines? In this article it stated that offshore turbines could produce up to 20% of the power demand for coastal states. To me the number sounded significant in comparison how much other energy sources we wouldn't be using because of the wind turbines. It also states that Obama's administration is pulling for an offshore energy program. I think that it is great to hear that we are taking full advantage to other energy sources that will better our environment.

Eco Event #2

I found this article on a site called aidwatchers.com. On this site they have many articles on what is going on in Japan and what can be done to help.

The title of this article is "Does Japan Need Your Donation?". The reason I chose to read this article at all was because of how interesting I thought the title was. When you first read it you think to yourself, "well of course Japan needs our donations". What we do not realize is that the American Red Cross does not need anymore donations. They stated this to the public and since then they have still raised over 34 million dollars. In the article they discussed that they did not even know what they were going to do with all of the extra money.

I found this article shocking because I always thought that organizations that do things like give aid will always need money but I guess I was wrong. Then i realized that it's not money that helps people but that only people can help people. This article gave me another view on how someone can actually do some good for Japan.

Eco Event #1

I found this article on msnbc.com. They have all sorts of articles that relate to this specific assignment.

The title of the article is "Some abandon rebates for reusable bags".The article is about grocery chains like Krogers and Safeway are turning away from using plastic bags because they are tired of giving the consumer a choice between the plastic bags or the ones you buy and reuse. It allows the costumers to save money every time they bring in their bag. To gain costumer support Krogers has offered to anyone who uses one of these reusable bags will get fuel perks each time they use it.

I think that it is great that the grocery stores are making the choice for the customers to live a better and more eco-efficient lifestyle. I also think that it is cool where some grocery stores are persuading people to use the bags by giving them fuel perks. I think that all big name grocery stores should consider doing something like this because it can only do good.

New Prezi that I'm using for presentation

"Going Green", Media's Influence and Indoctrination

I am currently not sure what I want my topic to be but if I had to choose two topics off the top of my head I would have to say that they would be Music, and legalization of marijuana.