Recently I've had to acquire some service hours, and normally with my busy schedule I hardly think about what I could be doing for others. My mom set up a few times this week and last for the three of us to volunteer at the Catholic Harvest Food Pantry. I had gone there to volunteer before with my aunt and my cousin, and I didn't really have the best experience and it made me not want to come back. But these few times that I've gone in these past two weeks have been life changing.
At first when my mom said that she had signed the three of us up to volunteer I was glad to be getting the hours, but I wasn’t really looking forward to it at all. I remembered the last time that I went I served a few people who weren’t very friendly, and it was freezing outside while taking their food to their cars, and I accidentally spilled one lady’s items all over the ground in the parking lot, so I was expecting another experience like my previous one.
"Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more." -H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
So, when we got there we checked in and went in to see the other volunteers, and they were all really nice and conversational. Then, when the people started to come in, everyone is “assigned” to a person or a family coming through, and all of the people I had were some of the nicest people I’d ever met. They were laid back, and they even laughed at all of my cheesy jokes. One man really stuck out to me the most. He was so funny and really nice, and he was probably about 6’5’’ too. He said that he was graduating from college in may, and then next fall going for his masters degree in business. I was so happy for him. So many people in his situation wouldn’t have found a way to turn their life around, but he did. His story was so inspiring and it made me look at my life in a different way. Even though this last year of my life has been up and down and I’ve had so many things to deal with; there are people who are so much worse off than I am, and I didn’t really think about how great my life is until the past two weeks volunteering at the food pantry. This man I met, I don’t even know his name, but I’m inspired by him. He has come from absolutely nothing, and he turned his life around. He found a way to go to college; to get an education, and to go into a field where there are so many jobs available, so that even a little later in life than most people, he can get a good job and make a new life for himself and his family. The best part about his story, is that he, himself, is struggling financially, and he told me that he was coming to the food pantry to get food for his aunt, who has even less. That, right there is something to be admired. We need more people like that man in our society. Throughout history, people started out by giving to one another and helping out others when they need a hand. But recently people have become so hostile to one another, possibly because of the development of racism in our nation since the issue of slavery, maybe because of continuing hostilities from the many wars that the US has fought over the years, but for whatever reason we’re not willing to give. People should begin to take their eyes off of themselves and give to others. Selfless people, honest people, and kind people, are what we need in our country. Meeting the kind man that I met at the food pantry has totally changed my perspective on life, and now I am going to strive to take my eyes off of myself and to step into other people’s shoes and give. After all, the most fulfilling thing you can do is give to others without wanting to receive anything in return. I challenge everyone who reads this to do the same. Try to give to others, and to help those who aren't as fortunate as you are, because sometimes we live in our own little bubbles, and we let others struggle while we help ourselves. People don’t realize that grand gestures aren't necessary to change someones life, it’s the little things that we do that can help people in the biggest ways. We can change the atmosphere of the world, one small act of kindness at a time. Challenge yourself in this new year to give unto others as you would yourself.
Thanksgiving is honestly my favorite holiday. I look forward to it all year long, my family has so many fun things that we do, and I'm always so excited for it to finally come. For thanksgiving in my family, there's no particular rotation system between houses at all. Normally about two or three weeks before hand my mom and her two brothers and sister decide whether or not we're having thanksgiving here, or in North Carolina; for the past seven years or so we've driven down to North Carolina for thanksgiving, starting when my grandmother became sick, we went down to be with her. Then, last year my family started coming up here more often because another one of my close relatives had become sick as well. They came here for thanksgiving last year and they decided to continue the tradition this year. My mom and my aunt (her sister) live here and within two miles of each other, and my uncles live in North Carolina and also within a two mile radius. So my uncle Steve and his family drove up to our house on Tuesday, and my uncle Tom and his family drove up on Wednesday, just before it began to snow like crazy. Steve, my aunt and three of my cousins stayed at our house, and Tom, my other aunt and two of my other cousins stayed at my aunt's house. This year we had thanksgiving at my house, for the first time in ten years. We had seventeen people coming, so my aunt Courtney and I moved our dining room table into our living room and had to push it together with another long table that we had. Our table stretched from one end of the room to the other and we just barely seated all seventeen. My aunt Courtney always cooks, no matter where thanksgiving is held, but she's a fabulous cook so I don't mind at all. Later that day, it had snowed harder than I'd ever seen and my younger cousins had only seen the snow a few times so they were so excited to go out and play in the snow. My uncles are really still about eleven years old at heart so they were itching to get outside too. We all went outside and had the best snowball fight I've ever experienced. It was borderline a full-out war. Then, after my cousins called for a cease fire, my cousin Andrew, my uncles Tom and Steve and I went out into the front yard to throw the football. Well that quickly turned into a complete football game, which then migrated out into the middle of the street. This was probably the highlight of my whole vacation, even though I am horrible at football and Andrew plays football. Either way, our thanksgiving "football game" was beyond fun, and we angered about a dozen cars in the process so it was a win win situation. For dinner we always have the usual things, turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and then everybody brings something extra, like this year my aunt made a green-bean casserole, my other aunt made appetizers, my aunt's stepmother brought two lemon pies and an apple pie for dessert and my brother made Oreo cookie balls. Our dinner is always good, no matter what we eat. It's mostly about the company. This thanksgiving made me think about all of the things that I'm grateful for, but out of all of the things in my life that I'm thankful for I'm most thankful for my amazing family. I don't know what I'd do without them. Even after all of the bumps in the road, they all dropped everything to come and support me. I'm so thankful that I'm so close with my aunts and uncles, and that my cousins are like my siblings.
Thanksgiving is actually a relatively new holiday, as holidays go. During his presidency, Abraham Lincoln made the executive decision to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. He didn't however decide what should and shouldn't be eaten during the feast. Thanksgiving is based off of the seasonal and cultural feasts that the Native Americans would have; they then introduced this idea to the pilgrims which is where we get our idea of the "first thanksgiving," which didn't even exist at the time. At this first thanksgiving it is believed that only men attended and that they ate venison, as the Wampanoag indians that attended brought five deer with them, fowl, the English men that attended shot and killed various types of water migrating birds, as they were plentiful in th fall. They also probably at pumpkins, not pumpkin pies, and "sobaheg," a Wampanoag favorite: a stewed mix of corn, roots, beans, squash and various meats. Plus the easy-to-gather local food: clams, lobsters, cod, eels, onions, turnips and greens from spinach to chard.
Recently, I went on a short road trip with my family. My Mom, my brother, and I drove to North Carolina to visit my Mom’s side of the family. A few times every year we go down to visit them. My Mom’s father and two brothers, my uncles, live there with their families. I am very close with my extended family, and I’m thankful that we are so close because other families aren’t. I don’t get to see them as often as I’d like, but I do get to visit them once or twice over the summer, once in the fall at thanksgiving, and then sometimes they come up to visit in the winter after Christmas. Last weekend we drove down to see my Grandad. We hadn’t seen him in about six months, and since he is in a nursing home he won’t be able to come up to our house with the rest of my family for thanksgiving. We went down overnight to have a “pre-thanksgiving” with him. My absolute favorite thing to do is to go on our North Carolina road trip because I love my family more than anything, and we always have the best time together.
This is a picture I captured of the sunrise right as we were about to leave York.
The long drive game me time to think about how lucky we are today. We can just hop in that car and drive off to wherever we need to go. We can get from city to city in under an hour, we can travel over three hundred and fifty miles in under seven hours. Imagine how long it would have taken over two hundred years ago? It would have taken them about fifteen to twenty days to travel over three hundred miles. Before they invented cars, trains and planes people had to use covered wagons, walk, or use horse and buggies. This was a very inefficient way of travel, and was the reason that people tended to settle near the coast when they came to America. Then, as the years progressed, and the presidents came in and out of office, Andrew Jackson was elected into office. He became the catalyst for the ideal of western expansion. This idea want greatly supported for a long time, considering people had very limited ways of transportation. However, with the Louisiana purchase in 1803 America practically doubled it's size. This prompted people to introduce the idea. Then, as I said before, with Jackson's presidency people began to migrate west. It would have taken them twice as long; they had to travel possibly upwards of one thousand miles, maybe more. Eventually, the invention of trains made the traveling much easier. And people could get to farther corners of the country, and creating expansion. I's glad that today we have the technology that we do, so that I could get to North Carolina in the time-span that I did. I wouldn't enjoy traveling for days or weeks on end.
Check out this short video about traveling during western expansion during the 1800's : http://www.history.com/topics/westward-expansion/videos
Recently I felt inspired to reread one of my favorite books, To Kill a Mockingbird. I loved reading this book during my freshman year English class. It's such a deep book, on so many different levels, and it provokes thought about many different themes throughout the book.
There are multiple themes in the book that really jumped out at me, like the coexistence of good and evil. This is arguably the most important theme in the book, because we tend to think of people as generally good or generally evil. Never a mixture of both. Scout and Jem journey through their childhood, and by the end of the book they have a more adult perspective, and they're confronted evil and learned to endure it in their lives without making poor decisions. In American history we have he theme of good and evil as well. During the discovery of America, Columbus was seen as a good person, going on a voyage into the unknown and finding something that would forever change the world. However was he really good? If you look at the other side of Columbus will see a person who ferociously snatched land away from the Indians, someone who killed them and treated them as slaves. He came into a world that was not his own and claimed it for someone else, disregarding any and all current inhabitants. Also during the revolutionary war, American played the good role, while Britan played the evil one (American perspective). we believed that we were nobly fighting for our independence from the controlling and evil British who taxed us without good reason, disregarded our needs, and betrayed us. During the civil war, both the northerners and the southerners took part in playing each role of good and evil. Each in the eyes of the other was evil, and was participating in different actions that angered the other side. These are just a few examples, but good and evil has been a major part of American history, and considering the fact that To Kill a Mockingbird is part of American literature, which is why it was a major theme in the book.
Another ever present theme in the book was: social inequality. Differences in social status are deeply acknowledged in the book in the complicated social "hierarchy" present in the Maycomb town. At the top are the Finches, who are pretty well off and well educated. Most of the townspeople fall beneath them. They, in a way, look down on others in the town without being hurtful. Then we have people like the farmers, like the Cunninghams, who lie below the townspeople, and the dreadful Ewells. Even further below the Ewells dwels the black community. Even thiough the black community have many good qualities and admirable skills, they are the lowest on the totem pole because of their race. This was kore present in the adult world, but the children noticed it too. At school they picked up on the fact that not everyone went to school, and that some people at school didn't have as much as others because their family couldn't afford it. For example, Scout cannot understand why Aunt Alexandra refuses to let her run around with young Walter Cunningham. The author, Harper Lee, uses the children’s ignorance at the layering of Maycomb society to critique the role of class, and status and, most importantly, the never ending prejudice in human interaction that we face in the world today.
When the book first cam out, people really enjoyed reading it because of the multiple messages that it send to the reader. In American history there has been a mix of these themes that present themselves in the book. As I said earlier, good and evil is probably the most present theme. However, social inequality is also a big one, especially relating to the issues of slavery, discrimination and racism. People have always organized themselves in a type of hierarchy. On the top are celebrities, politicians and the wealthy/ well known people of the country. Underneath them are the middle class people, the working class. Then comes the lower income families, and people who don't have jobs. Then immigrants and people in poverty/ homeless people. There will never be a time where everyone shares the same social status unless we commit to a communistic society, which would not be a good idea. In our country you at least have the chance to move in class. Relating it to the issue of slavery, they were done a great social injustice. They were treated as trash and sold like animals. This then lead to discrimination against black people because we couldn't about them like they were people. This then contributed to the development of the social hierarchy. Luckily, slavery was abolished after the civil war and today things are beginning to calm down. The book does a really good job of provoking you to think about different aspects of your own country. It really surprised me how much it really related to American society. This is most definitely why To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the most loved books in American History.
Going to a library, other than the one at my school, is something that I have never done. I never even realized this until recently I thought to myself, "have I never been to a real library?" The answer of course was no. Recently I visited Martin Memorial Library, fulfilling something off of my own bucket list too. I checked out one of my favorite books: Water for Elephants. I thought it was a really neat experience- although that may sound strange. My mom's friend actually goes to the library every week and checks out a new book, I thought that that was really interesting because i didn't think that people still went to the library ad checked out books. At my own school they recently began construction of the library converting it into something that is more technology friendly. They ended up decreasing the amount of books that we had, so you can see why people would think that library popularity would be going down.Libraries tend to attract the image of being "boring" or "ancient," however I think its fun to go to the library, filled with old books. I think it rather enjoyable to walk along the shelves, to sit in the corner with a good book and hideaway in my own little nook.
As most people know, libraries are very important in the history of our country, and also in world history, because they house books. Books used to be the only way to get information. People didn't have the internet, television, or phones to communicate information to one another, they had to learn things through reading a book. Since the dawn of the ages there had been a eagerness to preserve antiquities, weather on cave walls or in traveling journals. If you look carefully, you can see that there has always been some rough form of a "library" type system. The first libraries most likely originated in Egypt, considering they were so technologically advanced, for their time. Archeologists have found evidence of multiple clay tablets and papyrus scrolls, which have all found close together or even in mass amounts. This would lead them to believer hat the ancient Egyptians, in some sense, had a library system put into place even that long ago. Once books came onto the scene, that as a whole different story. Now they really had something to work with. Instead of storing societal or institutional records Greece and Rome both sported private libraries filled with fiction and nonfiction books. All over the world libraries began to evolve. People began switching from scrolls to bound paper books, and library architecture improved immensely. They were held up by pillars, surrounded by gardens and lakes, flowers and trees. They really stood out form your modern everyday library. This was because people treasured books, so much more than we do today, plus book-making was extremely labor intensive. It took a long time to make one book, which was why they were so high in value.
Interior of a medieval library at the University of Leyden, 1610
"The library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where HISTORY comes to life." -Norman cousins
Chained Library in Wimborne Minster
In fact, Librarians would even chain books to the shelves to prevent thievery, and only the most esteemed people were allowed to borrow books. Borrowing of books wasn't accepted at first, librarians began to understand that lending a book to someone could mean that it would be copied while in the borrower’s possession. If the book was copied, eventually the library would receive a new title for its collection. With the invention of the printing press, everything changed and for the better, interest in libraries increased significantly with the increased quantity of books and the decrease in associated costs. This occurred during 1600-1700, which is also known as the golden age of libraries. It wasn't until after the "golden age" that libraries reemerged permanently and became primary establishments in communities around the world, and developed into to the libraries that we know, and are familiar with today. In the United States, there were tons of examples of libraries that weren’t quite considered public, yet were very significant. For instance, the Library Company of Philadelphia, an independent research library that focused on American society and culture. It was founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin, was considered to be the first successful lending library. This was an amazing accomplishment for the state of Pennsylvania, and holds immense historical significance.
The Library Company of Philadelphia 1790
Milton D. Martin
Martin was quite an avid reader and book lover, upon his death in 1912, he bequeathed $125,000 to the establishment of a public library in York, PA. The Guardian Trust Company appointed John E. Baker, Vincent K. Keesey, D. F. Lafean, Atreus Wanner and Allen C. Wiest as directors of the Martin Library Association, named in his honor. His money wasn't quite enough to fund the entire establishment, but he was the person who made it possible. Through sound management and added contributions the project grew, and on Halloween eve of 1935, the Martin Memorial Library was opened, and Martin's dream was finally achieved.
The original staff of Martin Library in 1936
Jeanette Woolsey with the Martin Library bookmobile, reading to children in the early 1950's.
Martin Library, in york PA, just celebrated its 79th anniversary. Despite the technology boom in our society Martin Library receives about 40,000 visitors a month or nearly 500,000 a year; in 2010 about 1.2 million people visited libraries in the county through Sept. 30. The library was built in 1920, and is still standing on the original lot today, and opened its doors for the first time on halloween eve, 1935. Katherine Shorey was the fist librarian of Martin Library, she was said to have a very warm and kindhearted personality which undoubtedly set the tone of the atmosphere there. In the 1950's a children's wing is added on, Martin Library began its popular bookmobile program which reached students in the York City School District, who were read to by adult volunteers, and in 1963 Martin Library was appointed one of the first District Libraries in the state, and provided reference materials for both York and Adams counties. In the United States, there were tons of examples of libraries that weren’t quite considered public, yet were very significant. It's amazing how much history the local library holds.
The breathtaking reading room of the New York Public Library
Going to a library is really like a trip through history. There are so many books hidden away in the old wooden shelves; you never know what you might discover. My grandmother always talks about her childhood, growing up in Australia, and how they didn't have television, and the only way to entertain yourself was to listen to the radio or to read a book. Sometimes I wish it was still like this because people would benefit so much fro reading on a regular basis; its enriching. Today we really take books for granted. We have so many other ways of getting information that nobody has the need or even desire to read anymore. Its so much more interesting to read a book about topic than to read an informational program about it, don't you think? Today, it seems as though libraries, and even books in general, are going out of style. People have become so increasingly overtaken with their lives that they don't have "time" to read anymore, let alone go to the library and check out a book. This always make me think about centuries ago when only the most educated people knew how to read, and how glorified libraries were. Its upsetting that today these things have decreased in value, while less important things have taken their place.
This is a stunning snapshot of the way autumn brightens up York.
Recently I took a walk through a cornfield nearby. Most people would think it's a silly thing to do, but I, however, found it serene and quite relaxing. Even though this cornfield is close to where I live, I had never taken the time to appreciate it. Its really amazing how large a cornfield really is. When you think about it, just how many corn stalks are in one cornfield? Hundreds, maybe thousands, depending on the overall size. Then, to think that each individual corn stalk came from one minute seed; its truly incredible. The silence and seclusion was an enriching and though provoking experience. I realized how busy the world is; how fast its moving, day in and day out. Everyday is filled with haste, activities, schedules, constant running. The silence of the cornfield served as a reality check; a reminder to stop, slow down, and look around. How often do we do that? I enjoyed walking around, yes it's a rather small activity, but it was very meaningful. After all, life is all about the little things.
Corn is a very significant crop in America. Corn is America's number one field crop, and surpasses all other crops in value and volume of production. Settlers discovered this new grain when they made their voyages, and in the 1500's and 1600's corn was a major export of the new world. Corn was the most important cultivated plant in ancient times in America. Early North American expeditions show that the corn‑growing area extended from the southern most parts of North Dakota and both sides of the lower St. Lawrence River Valley southward all the way to Argentina and Chile. It extended westward toward the middle of Kansas and Nebraska, Arizona, New Mexico and southern Colorado. When the pilgrims first arrived in America and endured a terrible winter, the Indians taught them how to grow food, especially corn. We can infer from corn's great significance, drawings and paintings that corn was served during the first thanksgiving as well. In fact, corn was not an international crop before America was discovered. After the great migration, when hundreds of settlers came from Europe to the new world, they began growing corn in America and then exporting it back to their home countries. Only after the discovering, and settlement of America did corn make its way through Europe and other parts of the world. Also, here in York Pennsylvania, corn is a big deal. The fall brings many corn mazes, and cornfields spring up all over town. They aren't sparse around here by any means.
http://www.history.com/shows/mankind-the-story-of-all-of-us/videos/corn -Visit this link for a short, but very interesting video.