Friday, November 20, 2009

iPods

On the 18th of November after S.O.S I walked into my working with words class fully expecting to have a lot of dry work and not much fun at all. Usually the only thing that makes this class and the work in it bearable is the use of my iPod. Unfortunately that day I sat down at my desk with my iPod and binder ready for the class. The handout gets passed out and I settle into my chair seeing the work I have an hour to complete. Oddly Dr. Sky objected to the use of my iPod and said that a new rule had been put into effect and that we could not use our iPods. I openly objected to this saying that we always used our iPods. The only thing she had to say was that it was a rule and she had to follow it.
That class was absolute torture. Not only did I have seven page of grammar I had to listen to other people complaining about the same thing I was. After what seemed like double the time we were dismissed for lunch and to the freedom to talk to each other. At that moment I remembered that my friend from another school had written a petition and was able to go off campus at lunch so I thought why not do the same here. That is why I am writing a petition volleying for the use of our iPods in class.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

The Only Fuel to Hate is Indifference

“The only fuel to hate is indifference” Dr. Eva Olsson came to SJK to say some very simple words with an astounding meaning. I was awestruck to find out that this old, frail woman standing in front of me was in fact a survivor of the worst deed done by humans. She was a survivor of the Holocaust. Dr. Olsson came and spoke with such enthusiasm and belief that you had to not only believe, but accept what she said. Not only was she speaking, she also had a visual slide show in the back showing the mounds of people being loaded on trains, the gas chambers where millions were killed, and the mass graves where millions were buried.

”You went to the left or the right”. Eva Olsson said in her presentation. “If you went left you got a free walk into the gas chambers where you suffocated. If you went right you got the privilege of serving the rest of the war or the rest of your life (whichever came first) to hard labour in a field or factory making tanks or bullets for the Nazi army”. Leaving that day I realized that what happened to Eva is happening to a lot of people every day around the world. In Africa children are starving to death every day and the entire world is turning a blind eye on it. If I have learned anything from Eva it is that the worst thing you can do is nothing, unfortunately that is exactly what happened when she and millions of others were in the fight of their lives against the Nazis and starvation.

As Eva recalled stories of the Nazis forcing everyone to leave their shoes behind on the rivers edge and March down the road to the gas chambers where the air was forced from their lungs I thought back to earlier in her presentation when she said that the Nazis would shout any woman holding a baby. First I thought it was just another thing they did but then realized there was more cruelty behind it than there appeared. The bullet would pass through the baby’s head and into the woman’s heart therefore saving a bullet for the next person. If anything this showed me that humans are capable of great compassion and great cruelty. Having Eva speak to me has forced me to finally see the world as it is, a smudge of dirt in the endless expanse of space, but remember this planet is not just dirt, there are also diamonds.