SAM

SAM

“Helping immigrants and refugees is the most important in my life” – John Edward Samms

Hi everyone again! Today, please let me introduce about my teacher who help me so much when I came here until now. His name is Sam, John Edward Samms, he’s 60 years old and he’s a kind-hearted, decent person, I like talking with him and ask him to give me the advises because he has knowledge of so many angles of life, such as, Music, Society, History, etc . He has had a lot kinds of job in his life: rake leaves and shovel snow when he was a little boy. He was a guitarist in a rock n roll band in 16. After graduating university, he become an advertising for a company, but he quick because he didn’t feel happy while he was working. He spent time to travel and then teaches English as a Second Language (ESL) for immigrants and refugees.

Samms is the old man with a clam and gentle face, he would like to help others people when they have problems and need advices from him. “The important in his life that is helping immigrants and refugees.” he said.  When I asked him why he likes to help others people, especially, immigrants and refugees, he explain:” I know how hard it is come to a new culture and I respect the courage of people who are brave enough to do it”, new people feel hard to adopt to new culture, he said. Samms help other people for no advantages that he takes from them, he thinks all people who live in the work is still a big family even they are from different countries and have different cultures, “I feel that if you can help new comes, it’s your responsibility to do so” he told me.

Born in Ireland, and then Samms moved to United States when he was a little boy, after that he had traveled and lived in so many places: Mexican, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Arizona, New Mexico before he chooses Oregon is his hometown.  Because of traveling, he has so many experiences of feelings and difficult troubles what people can have when they move from their hometown to live in another society. They will feel confused, uncomfortable and even scared because they don’t know anything or have no idea about what they should do, he said.

He told me about his memories when he traveled, one of them is when he traveled to Mexico, and his car had problem with the wheel tire while he was driving. He must get his car repaired and when the mechanic talked about machine and the problem that his car had with him, he said that he can’t understand the mechanical thing, they looked like a different language to him. He felt confused and uncomfortable because he had no idea about that issue: he couldn’t know if the mechanic would had cheated on him, and he didn’t know what he should do next. These are terrible feeling for him, but he can have more sympathy and understand more the feelings of immigrants and refugees when they come to live in others coutries, after that he wants to help others more than because he doesn’t want anyone else to feel these negative emotions when they try to adopt to new society.

I asked Samms how he feels about people who don’t really like to help others when  they can’t take any advantages from them. He said those people are selfish, they have small and tiny mind. They never know that they can learn something from helping people. “helping” is the happiness and helping people is the way how to enjoy the life, your mind will open and your heart will become a heart of gold. Your life’s never empty from enjoyableness because surprised thing usually come when you help others, you never imagine what they can bring to you and even they can help you after that.

Even though Samms is retired already, but he still keep helping others, especially, immigrants and refugees by teaching ESL at Portland University. His plant is getting a better computer to help him commune easily with others who live too far from him, he told me that he would like to help as much as possible and Internet will be the best way to let him makes it become true.

ANIMAL FARM

ANIMAL FARM

George Orwell (1903-1950) was a famous English writer who lived in the first half of the twentieth century. He was both a social critic and a chronicler of English culture. He particularly liked to write about the ills of society, especially oppressive governments and Wars. He is the author of 1984, which many consider to be the novel that best anticipated the evils of uncontrolled government surveillance and one of the greatest dystopian novels of all time and another novel about politics that I would like to analyze now, Animal Farm. The reason that I so like this book isthat Orwell had sufficient talent to satirize society and government by using the animals that lived on a farm. That’s a very creative idea and he was so perceptive in his creation of the characters that we sometimes forget that they’re not humans.He focuses on many of the negative aspects of many of political power and how the government controls others by using assorted tricks and tactics, such as the spread of fear, the utilization of what we now refer to as “spin doctors” to change the public’s view of a negative situation and the creation of cults of personality. Today, I will talk about 2 main ideas that I think they make Animal Farm such an excellent book. These are revisionist history and hypocrisy.

The definition of hypocrisy is “pretending to feel or believe something that is different from what you really feel or saying one thing and doing another.“ (Oxford Dictionary of American English for learners, Oxford University presses). We can see hypocrisy very clearly in evidence in Animal Farm and also the corrupting influence of power. Almost politician are hypocrites. They use their showmanship and public speaking talents to give wonderful speeches about how things should be and will be once they are elected. They paint a picture of a new and more just world that appeals to the majority of people, but when the actually come to positions of power, in time they become very little different from the people or regimes that they’ve replaced. Until this is discovered however they have the power to manipulate and control those around them.  In Animal Farm, the pigs create a revolution and write down “The seven commandments” of  life that they will observe now that they are in control of the farm. It doesn’t take very long however before it becomes apparent that there is a disproportionate distribution of both labor and food and that the idealistic ideas of their great revolution begin to slowly be chipped away . For example, one of the commandments is that “No animal shall sleep on the bed.” The animals in the barn abide by this rule exactly but Napoleon breaks the rule by sleeping on the bed (chapter IV). Another example, “No animal shall drink alcohol.” However, the pigs drink Mr. Jones’s wine and later they even sell Boxer when he can’t work anymore to buy whisky for themselves (Chapter VIII and IX).  The pigs are real hypocrites; they wear public masks to make them appear to be good leaders in the other animal’s eyes, but behind their backs, they aren’t worthy as their words.

Another main them is “revisionist history”. The pigs distort history to make themselves always appear to be in the right. For example, Snowball was a hero in the Battle of the Cowshed, “Animal Hero, First Class”. However, Napoleon and Squealer manage to rewrite that fact and claim that Snowball was never an “Animal Hero, First Class.”. The animals note something isn’t right, but they can’t communicate their feelings because they aren’t good speakers or capable of explaining themselves. Even though Napoleon steals the idea about the windmill from Snowball and says to everyone that he is the one who created it, the animals, again, can’t say anything as usual because they can’t remember the details what actually happened. Rulers and governments very frequently take advantage of the poor memories of those who they control to change the truth for their own purposes. People can’t remember the exact details of what has actually occurred and they have no recourse but to believe what they’re told whether they actually feel that it’s wrong or not. In fact, history books are great tools to create a false view of things that have happened particularly when they’re used to plant lies in the minds of impressionable young people. Because they can’t confirm what’s true or not; they have to believe what the books say. Concealingthe bad things and selectively promoting the good things is a deceptive trick that politicians use to control people.

George Orwell is an excellent satirist because he depicts the evils of politics and how power inevitably corrupts individual people, governments and societies. He takes off the masks of the hypocrites who wield power unjustly and exposes their real faces. He also tells us the way that governments try to take control of our minds and lives by using their wicked manipulative tactics. Animal Farm is a world where these evils are laid bare and we can see them exposed more clearly than ever before.

Final Week

Final Week is coming and I'm really exhausted. Tests, quizes, essays chase apter me and I even don't have time to do anything except studying and working. I will the semeter will end soon and I cna get some free time to relax later.

Rain of S.E.N.S is so wonderful~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW87U9z-9Nk&feature=related

Kowarete iku Sekai

Kowarete iku Sekai

(A breaking World)

On the dark-moor road

I step my footprints on the ground

I realize

The feelings of loneliness.

The sky is pale without sunshine

The trees beside the track are emaciated

With the colorless leaf

Why is scenery so colorless?

Even I’m pale.

A guitar leans on the rocks

Wind plays a sad melody on breaking strings.

I can hear

Crying sounds confound the wind whistled cold

On the roof of the hill

I see the word

It is breaking

Little by little, the color is faded away

White

It’s so white.

No more the green of plants

No more the blue of ocean

No more the brown of soil.

The word is turned to become white.

By human

Eventually, human is discolored by human

Human strangle human

Where is the color of sentiment?

Where is the color of heart?

Where is the cure color of human soul?

Without kindness, we live and die as zombies without souls

We corrupt

I want to scream

I want to say stop

This start is discolored

Do you see?

The plant where we live is being discolored

What do you give to it?

Painful

The world is breaking by painful and hopeless

Do you hear?

It’s crying

What kinds of civilization are you proud?

That thing that you think it makes you become prefect.

It’s just the selfish from your mind.

You live on the lies to comfort yourself that you don’t do anything wrong.

Lies… They’re just lies.

Tell me how do you describe the time?

Do you realize the world turned into white?

Do you realize we are coming to the end?

I wonder when we won’t be existed anymore.

I don’t know.

But I can feel

It closes.

The world will end.

But before that, I want to know the unblemished love

I want to live a meaning life

I want to hear the laughs of new born.

I want to see the last peace on this world

And the color of the tears is dropping down to my chin for this star.

Are their whites or not?

A breaking World.

All of my inspirit from the song has the same name “Kowarete iku Sekai”, and my feelings about the world. I don’t know any title to give for my poem, because “Kowarete iku Seika” is the best title.