What if You Literally Worked 11 Years For Nothing?

I don't necessarily have a problem with illegal immigrants, most of them seem to work really hard and from what I have heard from "experts" they actually play kind of a vital part in our economy. The only part of the illegal immigrant situation I have issues with is the whole our borders being unprotected and we have no idea who is coming and going, thing. This, however important, isn't what I wanted to write about.

Imagine if you worked for 11 years and and saved every possible penny you could, all the while making about $5.50 an hour. At $5.50 an hour, most of us would not only be eating a lot of ramen noodles and mac n' cheese, but we probably would not be putting enough away to afford to buy more than a few value meals after everything was over. Somehow, Pedro Zepeta managed to put away $59,000 under those circumstances.

Pedro has done the unenviable task of cleaning plates for the past 11 years and had $59,000 to show for it, until now. On his way home to Guatemala, customs officials seized the money at the airport and it now looks like Pedro will not get any of it. Granted, Pedro has not paid taxes on any of the money. I guess there is a rule that you can't just bring a dufflebag stuffed with almost 60k onto an airplane. (If it's over 10k you have to declare it, which makes sense)

I really feel for this guy. I don't think he should get a free ride by any means - I say take out the taxes, have him pay penalties or whatever for not paying them, but give him something to show for all of this. I don't see how this is a triumph for law enforcement when we know that there are white-collar crooks all over this country making money by stealing from the unsuspecting or just making their fortune by taking advantage of people. I don't know what this guy is feeling right now, but I would imagine it is similar to being kicked in the stomach by a rhino. And what was Pedro going to do with the money? He was going to buy land in his mountain village to build a home for his mother and sisters. Put yourself in Pedro's shoes.

Reality Television

I have some serious mixed feelings about "Reality TV." The quotation marks are because of the ever increasing notion that much of what is portrayed as real is actually pretty scripted. I guess the best way to describe my reaction to this idea is it was unexpected but unsurprising.

Most people tend to agree that RT is similar to junk food: It isn't good for you at all but still very satisfying and it takes a lot to get sick of it. I find myself indulging in RT probably a little more than I should. On a weekend I have been known to watch a marathon of a show that I have never even watched a single episode of; one of them about renovating houses comes to mind but I can't even remember the name.

I won't say that there are RT shows about every subject now because clearly there are still some more nuggets waiting to be mined. I guess this fall CBS is debuting a show called "Kid Nation" which is, to my understanding, a show featuring a bunch of kids living on their own in a town without adults to see if they can form a civilized society. This sounds so wrong in so many ways but I am still going to check it out. I think you have to. There has to be some kind of lesson that can be gleaned from watching people create a society whose dreams are unspoiled by the reality of adulthood.

I do feel though that some of these shows have merit. Even though shows like "The Biggest Loser" tend to make a spectacle of overweight people sometimes, I have to believe that it is motivating others to get healthier. I like to watch that show not to see how a large person does on an obstacle course but to see what kind of a transformation they make and how much better they feel about their self. "Extreme Home Makeover" is also a tear-jerker. These people are always so incredibly grateful and deserving of their new homes that it choked me up a little. Unfortunately I had to stop watching that because a friend told me that 80% of them lost their houses after the show because they couldn't afford the hike in property taxes from the added value.

What the Heck is Going on Here?

I am worried that we are approaching a dangerous point. Back in the 60's and 70's it seemed like police didn't hesitate to crack some heads whenever they lost control of a situation or couldn't get the violators to cease and desist. I am referencing for the most part the non-violent protests of the Vietnam war in which a lot of heads were tee'd off on with police batons.

You don't really see a lot of this anymore except for in other countries, but in this country is seems like the taser is the new police baton. The image of someone's head being split open or someone swatting at their back like they are a lumberjack chopping wood is pretty unsettling. By it's nature, the taser is not nearly as dramatic and doesn't really have the same visual impact.

Despite maybe not looking near as violent though, I hear that being "tased" is extremely painful and I believe it. I can't imagine being electrocuted is at all fun. I have noticed over the past year that tasers seem to be being used all over the place.
People of all ages have been getting a healthy dose of volts; There doesn't seem to be much discretion in the application of them as far as age or situation either.
Yesterday a University of Florida student was tasered after he asked some questions at a talk being given by ex next president John Kerry. It wasn't Kerry that asked for the guy to be removed; it really isn't clear who made that call except it looks like it may have been the cops themselves. The subject of them and the way he asked his questions was clearly meant to provoke Kerry, but he wasn't doing anything illegal. Kerry responded by saying he would like to answer but he didn't really have the opportunity.

The officers seized Andrew Meyer and dragged him away from the podium. Meyer did resist and was a little hysterical but the officers got him on the ground without any excessive force. It is while he is lying there saying that he will walk out on his own if they let him stand that one of them lights him up. You can hear Meyer plead "Don't tase me bro!" but the cop wasn't having any of that. If you watch the video it doesn't really seem necessary at all.

I should say that I respect police officers. I wont ever pretend I know what their job is like and that I could do it better. However, I think there should be some responsibility when it comes to this type of thing. There is some serious controversy over whether tasers are safe or not and some people have died from them. I think that maybe tasers should be reserved for a little more serious situations. People should be able to ask shocking questions without actually being shocked.
The article and video are here.

Remembering is Important

I did one of those quick polls on CNN earlier today that posed the question, "Should we stop having large scale remembrances for 911?" I clicked no. I was quite surprised when I saw the current results were that 51% of people disagreed with me. That is, they think it is time to move on a little. They must not have heard the woman I just heard on the radio describing talking to her husband who was on the 105th floor of Tower 2.

Listening to this woman telling the story of hearing her husband's breathing beginning to get worse and worse, and how he passed out at one moment almost put you in her shoes, at least it did enough to hope Bin 'Ladin is dead.

They stayed on the phone with each other as the smoke started pouring up from the floors below. She watched on her TV as things began to fall off of the burning building. Both of them knowing what had already happened with the first tower, and that there was no way for him to get out, she told him "I think its time for us to say goodbye." She said that he seemed peaceful as he repeated over and over to her ,"I love you, I love you." And then there was a loud crack, and he was gone.

This woman's story moved me to tears. I cannot begin to imagine what it would be like to be in that building and have Anne on the other end of that phone, and to say goodbye for the last time. I cannot bear the thought of having to make the decision to say goodbye for the last time. Most of us can't and hopefully will not ever be able to.

There are almost 3,000 other stories like the one above. Almost 3,000 reminders as to why it isn't too early to give this day the amount of respect it still deserves. Most importantly, it should remind us all that some of the people that did this are still out there, and that for every one of them that we have killed there are many willing to take their place. We don't need to live in fear and change our lives, or succumb to the will of these soulless sacks of skin. But maybe we should keep being reminded until we don't need to be anymore, until all of the questions can be answered. Most importantly, in my opinion: Killing people who want to kill us is the obvious solution, but seems a temporary fix as there isn't a shortage of these people. The tougher question, and I think the one that provides the more permanent solution, is how do we get these people to never want to kill us in the first place. If we can answer that, then we "win" the war against terror.

This Isn't Quite Sparta

While I was back at State this past Saturday, I got a taste of something that I figured might happen. All football teams have a chant that the fans know and can yell in unison when something good happens in the game. It shows solidarity and just kind of sounds cool. I don't have any problem with that.

I don't have a problem either with what I heard on Saturday. Most have at least heard of the movie "300." The movie is about arguably the toughest civilization that ever lived, known for their godlike warrior abilities: The Spartans. Not the Green and White ones but the tough as nails bred from birth to fight and die Spartans the movie was based on. In a point in the movie King Leonidas asks his warriors ,"SPARTANS, WHAT IS YOUR PROFESSION?" To which they reply with an awesomely disciplined war chant. This sounded pretty cool and put a smile on my face when it echoed through Spartan Stadium.

What I am worried about here is this being taken too far. A little bit of referencing a very cool movie will go a long way. I don't want to see the band doing the half-time show in leather underwear and red capes. Finally, maybe my biggest problem with this is I don't know if we have earned it yet. State has been an extremely mediocre football team especially the past few years.

We have maybe the coolest mascot in all of sports period, but I think we should earn the title a little more before we exploit "300" more than we deserve to. Toughness is something I have seen us seriously lack so I don't think we should imply that we are ready to take on the Persian empire just yet, lets start with the rest of the Big 10.

We Don’t Have a Spare Planet

Why isn’t everyone concerned about global warming? Especially in recent years and even months the argument that something very serious seems to be happening is snowballing. Why is it that there are still people who will not buy into this idea and refuse to believe there is anything to worry about? The black fog that obscures the reasonable conclusions about this situation appears to be political debate.

Since when did caring about the planet that we live on, the one and only planet we have, become a political issue? Who decided that being responsible for our actions and limiting the impact we have should be a negative thing? This should be a moral value that all of us share no matter your political affiliation, or even if you don’t care about politics at all. A problem that affects every living species has no business being separated into political categories. I would think that the universal consensus would be that we are going to need this planet, and so will our children, and their children after them.

I understand that it is somewhat difficult to come to a conclusion about whether or not climate change is man made. There is a lot of back and forth conversion that aims to discredit one side or the other in this argument. Those who trumpet the dangers of the situation are labeled as alarmists and on the other side are the people who are stubbornly insisting that there is no problem. For those who simply believe that nothing is happening or that it’s completely natural, I tend to believe scientists. I know it’s kind of silly to think that way, but with all of their crazy facts and numbers I just lean towards them. You have to be very resistant to not want to believe there is at least something to take note of.

Of course the Earth changes over time. Every piece of land was once connected, and before that it was entirely water. The problem is that the evolution of the planet is supposed to be gradual. Over more time than we can possibly fathom, the Earth has fashioned itself (minus our adjustments) into the blue and green work of art that we call home. It naturally develops a harmonious equilibrium that sustains life almost perfectly. When that balance is corrupted, it will right itself. It has found ways to correct problems since its birth, but it appears that we are the first species Earth wasn’t ready for. Our insatiable desire to use sustainable resources at an unsustainable rate is not something the Earth is prepared for. The impact that we seem to be having is too overwhelming for her to handle.

Try and grasp the actual magnitude of the following. In the past 50 years, the Dead Sea has been lowered by 80 feet. The impact is evident in places like Shishmaref, Alaska, where the ocean is ominously approaching the village at a rate of about 10 feet per year. If you do the math on the above examples it seems as if something quite unnatural is going on. Cartographers literally have to redraw maps to account for the drastic changes.

We are seeing the impact of warming everywhere. Animal species have begun to and will continue to die out unless the trend is reversed. They will be the first ones to suffer but certainly not the last. It should not be up to us to decide the fate of the planet or its inhabitants, but it appears that we may have unknowingly been doing so all these years. More than likely, man will not really begin to panic until he is more directly affected by shortages of water, proliferation of disease, and various other complete global disasters.

We can be selfish creatures, but we also have great capacity for good. Now that we can clearly see problems and have the technology to provide solutions, all that lacks is the will. Our government is not going to baby-sit all of us and take care of the mess we have created. We have a responsibility think about what kind of a legacy we want to leave to future generations. This is one situation that should be discussed openly without being tainted by partisanship. It seems that if you are a liberal you believe in climate control. If you are conservative you automatically think man-made global warming doesn’t exist. Why should we let politics decide what our values are? It should be our values that decide our politics.

Even if for some reason it turns out that we are not the cause of rising temperatures, why should we do nothing about it? I’ll borrow an analogy from a failed species, the dinosaurs. It is largely accepted now that an asteroid caused the extinction of one of the most impressive collection of animals the Earth has ever seen. An asteroid is obviously not a man made phenomenon, but we would do everything in our power to stop that from happening again. Well, there is an asteroid heading for us right now, maybe not from the cold depths of space, but it is going to seriously affect mankind’s future, only we have to capability to alter its course.

Complete Garbage

If you were sitting in your living room eating a candy bar, would you ever simply reach over, open up a window, and throw the wrapper outside onto the ground? What about if you were at a friend’s house? I’m sure that in all but the most extreme cases the answer would be no way. Very few people could imagine being so blatantly lazy and showing such lack of respect. Therefore, I am at a complete loss when I try and comprehend why some people think nothing of rolling down their car window and letting the highway wind take their trash to the side of the road to sit and rot. As far as I know a lot of the roads that we drive on are paid for and kept up with our tax dollars, so this should be upsetting to all of us. Effectively, you are throwing garbage in your own back yard, only the one you hardly spend any time in.

Driving on 696 in some areas is almost like someone has blazed a trail through a trash dump. On both sides of the road are decorations of cups, bags, cartons, cans, bottles and plenty of other eyesores that someone just couldn’t bare to look at anymore while they were driving and had to get rid of. “No, I just can’t make it to my house even though I have a garbage can there.” Either that, or for some reason some people just don’t think about how inappropriate this activity is.

As humans, we do enough job of altering the landscape that mother earth designed. I am not a complete opponent of progress although I think we could use a little discipline in the pursuit of it. If we are going to build roads and destroy natural habitats, we could at least keep it clean after we do so. Besides the actual soiling of the places we all have to inhabit, there are some other issues here as well.

After all, what does it say about you if you think it is alright to throw your garbage wherever you please? There seems to be some issue with size of ego for one. How important to you have to feel to think that you are privileged enough to not have to clean up after yourself? No one follows you around at your house and picks up things you toss aside as you walk through it do they? I wonder how many people consider this: eventually someone is probably going to have to pick that thing up. Instead of the effort it would take to throw it away yourself you have created a need for someone to walk along the side of a road and bend over to pick up your waste. Why should anyone ever have to do that?

Or maybe it is an issue of pride, specifically, a lack of any pride in your city, state, country, and planet. We should feel grateful to live in such a great country, and could at least show our gratitude about it by not throwing miscellaneous junk out of the window on our way to or from work. I cannot recall where I read this quote or maybe even the exact wording, but the message should be clear; “I should hate to tread upon this earth and to not leave it a better place for it.”

Is the grass really greener?

Everyone has said this at some point, and it doesn’t take a long time before you will hear it or something like it again, “I hate Michigan, and I can’t wait to get out of here.” The question I have is why? What is it that you have heard about the other 49 states that makes you feel like we were all shafted in the 'Place of Origin' lottery? I have never heard about these other mystical states that have perfect weather year round, guaranteed to be 70-75 degrees and sunny for the rest of your life with 0% humidity. No one has ever told me about a place where you grow up having more fun then you can handle, because these places only exist in your mind.

All of my life I have listened to my peers talk about their distaste for Michigan and how much better life would be somewhere else. Like where? Gary, Indiana? Anyone who has ever driven through the nearby home of Michael Jackson has already seen how much worse it could be. If you ever happen to be passing through, the stench of Gary will welcome you long before its signs do.

For one thing, I think that complaining about their current situation, even if unwarranted, makes people feel better. Or at least they think it makes them feel better. Talking about how great everything must be somewhere else comforts their discontent for having an average life. Now, I do not disagree that in most peoples’ situations life can get better; there is almost always room for improvement, but living an average life isn’t all that bad. I wonder though if a change of attitude rather than latitude might help tremendously.

I can come up with countless reasons why you should be proud to live in the “Great Lake State.” The reason for that nickname would be one of them. Michigan is saturated with lakes. There are few things in life that bring a sense of peace the way water does. Just being able to see water from wherever you are gives you a feeling of calm, and being in or on that water is one of the best ways to pass time that I can think of. You really shouldn’t be too upset about never being more than 6 miles away from an inland lake, which is the case on every square foot of Michigan soil. I think that it could be much worse than that.

Being cradled by the Great Lakes themselves shouldn’t be ignored either. There is a place at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park where you can stand on a beach 450 feet directly above Lake Michigan. The beach descends to the lake from where you are at about a 45 degree angle. The lake was completely reflective and the sky was a perfect blue when I was there. From the top, it looked like I was staring out over the edge of the world.

Besides being covered in fresh water, the change of seasons in this state gives you an ever changing landscape. Michigan’s fall season has enough eye candy to give you a retinal cavity. Around the middle of September, Michigan’s foliage explodes to reveal a display of color almost unrivaled in nature. Driving down a quiet road in late September on a perfectly beautiful day under a firework-like display of orange, yellow and red leaves will heal your soul.

The most hated thing about Michigan has to be its winters. I will not try to sugarcoat them: they are long and can be brutal. Now that said, there are some positives even related to those chilly months. Michigan offers some great skiing (or snowboarding) for one thing. It you like to ski it is one of the best ways to get outside and battle the drag of winter. If you don’t like skiing so much, you can still go up north with your friends that do and enjoy hot tubs and warm fires with them when they come back in from the cold. I’ll take some drinks with friends in a cabin up north with a fireplace over any bar I have been to. And if you cannot appreciate the brilliance of an entire state painted white with a fresh snow than I say you are too hard to please.

Now, having said all of the above there is still one more area to cover – what about not having enough stuff to do? Granted, there is probably more to do in a big city like New York than anywhere in Michigan, but that may be subjective. Can you get to a lake in less than 10 minutes? Can you go for a drive down a quiet street with your loved one? It hasn’t been my experience while driving in New York that it is easy to drive anywhere, something that I would say is taken way too much for granted. Can you have a field party at a moments notice when you are in high school? Can you ever build tree forts as a young kid, or play in “the woods” at all for that matter?

To a large extent where you live is what you make of it. There are people all over the country right now talking about how much better someone else must have it and how unfortunate they are to be stuck wherever they are, trust me. If none of this has made you appreciate how good we have it here and how much we have to be grateful for, imagine someone from Iraq complaining about having to grow up in Michigan – I thought so.