the federal government on illegals...

So right now all i really know is that I want to write on what bush and his people are doing about the illegal immigrants. I mean I know they are putting up a 700 mile wall but thats really about it because my first immigration paper focused more on what the governors opinions were since that was the campaign going on around that time. I haven't found much information yet due the crazy amount of work i have had recently but my ideas are basically to write about the government's immigration policy that is in place now, what they have to say about all the illegals coming in and what they plan to do about it.

To the left is the Hall Tower of Mechanicsburg, PA. Although it was
located less than 5 miles from my high school and was visible from two major highways, no one I knew seemed to know anything about it. A research paper assignment from my (amazing) 11th grade history teacher gave me an excuse to satisfy the curiosity about the tower that had plagued me since I first noticed it as a child. Working on the project was boring and frustrating at first, but once I uncovered a few details, my research took me all over my area hunting down people to interview, spending hours in the State Library flipping through microfilm newspaper articles, and sneaking onto the property to take pictures (and getting chased off several times by angry rednecks). When I finally turned in my paper, I had uncovered a truly fascinating story about a madman who built an enormous mansion and then fought to keep it through financial ruin and criminal charges. When he finally was forced to sell the property, he purposefully destroyed most of it, leaving behind only the charred remains of the tower (which was actually built to house his collection of European church bells).

So that leads me to what I'm planning to do with this paper. I was trying to think of something that I would enjoy and which would inspire me to become as involved and motivated as I was with the Hall Tower. Also, I wanted to do something that related to me personally that I could research with fieldwork, rather than a topic that had only vague significance to my life and would require dull hours hunting down articles online. I wanted to focus as well on the idea of public space we've been examining in class. So, I'm hoping to research what secrets could lie in the history of Kutztown's spaces, and how they could affect our life here. For example, the Hall Tower now attracts cults and is covered in satanic graffiti. Very few people know much about the unpleasant history of the place, yet for some reason it attracts satanists rather than happy picnickers. Clearly, the function of a space is effected in some way by its history.

So basically, I want to take the exploration of public space that we've worked on a step farther to incorporate extensive detail into the history of the spaces, and hopefully I draw some connections between what I find out and the way that space effects people's lives. I'm not sure what particular places I'm going to focus on, but I'm hoping that a visit to the Kutztown Historical Society will turn up something interesting.

Finally, here's a picture of Mr. Food in the 1800s.

Armor or concrete?

After careful consideration, I think I have an idea for a topic that would be a valuable addition to our class discussion thus far. I don't want to put too much flash into this post in case the idea isn't what we're actually supposed to be doing, but I would like to do some research into security in the United States in the post 9/11 world. One of the things that stuck out to me was the decision in Washington to cut funding on the war on terror to pay for a concrete barrier along the Mexican border and I think that a paper that examined the war on terror and how it relates to national security would be an interesting topic.

A Spark of Light in the Dark

**Disclaimer**- This blog is not all pretty-full because I am still undecided as to a topic. Sorry! It'll be pretty soon, I promise :)

I have been absolutely brain-dead this past week and have been at a loss for what to write about. I started looking back on my notes from the stories we've read and something caught my attention. In "The Use of Sidewalks-Safety" by Jane Jacobs she mentions how law enforcement does not enforce ALL safety... most safety is enforced by the citizens in the area. This sparked something in my mind and I realized that it seems as though it is our unspoken obligation, as fellow humans, to protect our own kind. Sort of like an instinct, you could say. If I can, I think I'm going to try to write my paper on our moral obligations as humans.

Tell me what you think!

Just what does Mark McGuire and a migrant worker have in common?

Well, when I dwell on the idea that the government wants to crack down on illegal activities such as illegal immigration, I start to think of other activities that the government is trying to crack down on like the drug problem in professional sports. All of the same ideas connect illegal immigration reform and the steroids controversy plaguing sports. Everyone knows that something must be done. Efforts are being made to thwart (yes, I said THWART) both of these problems but are coming up short. Illegal immigrants are still crossing the border and athletes are still taking steroids. Neither problem has a definite solution and its impact in their desired fields is speculated extensively. The idea for this paper would mostly be to show the impact of these problems and how people and the government view them as problems.

Over the past couple of years, Congress had hearings on the steroid problem in professional baseball. The baseball players at that hearing were, to name a few, Jose Canseco, Rafael Palmero and good old Mark McGuire. All testified that they either never took steroids or questioned why they were being asked that question (McGuire mostly). Bud Selig, commissioner of the MLB, started to enforce stronger penalties for offenders. At the same time, legislature throughout the country are trying to do the same thing with illegal immigration. Trying to enforce stronger penalties on illegal immigrants. In my perspective, Mark McGuire trying to shy away from admitting he took steroids (because we all know he did) or Rafael Palmero lying to Congress that he never and would never take steroids (he was caught taking them a few months later) is about the same as someone trying to cross the border with a fake ID. The ID is fake and the person knows it but they want to try and con somebody into believing them for their own benefit.

The premise of this entire paper is to show a couple things. First, it is to show how damaging this problem is to society (since kids look up to professional athletes) in relation to how illegal immigration is damaging society. Second, it is to show how the government is acting towards this issue when they do not have to (with stricter penalties being enforced and congressional hearings). This will link with how much the government should act towards the illegal immigration problem, which is something that the government IS responsible for. Another look on these topics is how people are sympathetic of both issues. For the steroids use, having record books with asterisks next to names to show the record was made by someone who used steroids. For illegal immigration, amnesty for those who cross the border illegally.

To walk where there are no sidewalks

Jane Jacobs writes that streets with busy sidewalks are the safest for people to walk on because there are street watchers. These street watchers are guardians of those who walk infront of their homes and businesses. In a world full of strangers, you are able to be safe.
What about where there are no sidewalks? As you walk on a path through a woods or along a dirt road, who is there to watch you and make sure nothing happens to you? Space is the issue now. Both space and how you interact with this space.
This space without sidewalks is slowly becoming populated. More and more people are coming into rural areas. Mostly they are getting away from the bigger cities such as New York City or Philadelphia. It is alot like a chain reaction, or like a filter. As an example, people who move out of NYC to say the Poconos because the real estate is cheaper and it is not the far to drive, people from the Poconos are then moving to say Wilkes-Barre or other cities, people from Wilkes-Barre are then moving to the "country". What are the effects of this increase in population in rural areas? Farms are closing down to sell their land because they can make more money in real estate then with their dairy profits. Rural America is changing.
The environment across the world is being affected due to an increase in population growth and thus increase in pollution. Humans need to know how to deal with this space because that's all we have. The rural communities need to be looked at and the environment needs to be too.

Bananas to Arizona

"It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
I've decided to start an entirely new blog entry. Despite the suggestions and what Mahoney said about being able to relate the subject of bananas to things we've talked about in class, I just don't really see it going anywhere. Fair trade is certainly a big issue, but one which has never really struck my fancy. The subject of organic gardening, however, did seem like it might be fun to pursue, but in the end I decided against this as well. I wanted a topic that would not only be interesting, but one which would also be beneficial for me to be knowledgeable about. Environmental issues have always interested me, and since I'm an environmental engineering major, I decided this would be a good subject for me to learn more about. Instead of choosing one issue to research thoroughly, I decided to research many issues in one place: Arizona. Next year I will most likely be transferring to Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, and I figured I should know about the environmental issues going on there. I found one article about global warming and how it was affecting many national parks in the United States including Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Arizona. I also found an article from the Sierra Club about the use of snow making in the Arizona Snowbowl. (I took the picture on the top when I was in Flagstaff a month ago - I was up 12,000 feet on Mt Humphrey, part of the San Francisco Peaks, in the Arizona Snowbowl.) Other issues of great concern in Arizona are fire management and air quality especially in the Grand Canyon. (The lower picture was taken by my parents when they visited the Grand Canyon last April.) Also, I recently read an article in National Geographic Adventure entitled "Along the Devil's Highway: A Border Odyssey", directly linking environmental issues to our discussion of illegal immigration in class (I also talked about the effect the 700-mile fence will have on the environment in my paper). I think this is a good start, but I'll keep looking for additional information that I think will be interesting.

As We Look at This Thing Called "Us"

Lately I've been thinking about the tattoo that I am hoping to get for my birthday (December 9th, yeah!) and it led me to ponder other types of prints. As I'm writing this blog, I am watching Spaceballs- you know, the Mel Brooks movie that spoofs Star Wars. There is a joke throughout the movie that consists of "Spaceballs: The Move" being printed on all different kinds of merchandise. The current "print" I am reading is Stranger Than Fiction by Chuck Palahniuk. I enjoy reading his work because his writing is so fresh, edgy, and controversial. Many of the elements in his stories are disturbing or obscene, and for some reason I am attracted to that kind of writing. Regardless, many other people are drawn to this sort of element. All of this questioning about "prints" steered me towards the media, which opened up an entirely new can of worms; why do the news and media include some groups and exclude others? Television shows such as South Park and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart are based on combining several different elements to draw viewers in: current events, humor, and personal bias. Exclusions are constantly being made in the media, even if it is only for entertainment value, and the viewpoints of the producers and those involved are impressed upon observers. Think of something as simple video games; children are trained from the very first level to automatically judge the “enemy” and to prevent them from interfering with your own person goal. Take note, I am by no means bashing video games; I absolutely love them and this is only serving the purpose of an example. What factor determines who is to be included and who is excluded in the media? I find it interesting what constitutes “who belongs”, and what defines “us”. Apparently, it depends upon whom you ask and the circumstances of the situation. I came across a few interesting things that relate to my possible topic: the rule of exclusion in the news, an article that discusses how the media influences gender roles and how things may change in the upcoming decade, an article discussing the media in Hungary and how they broadcast an imaginary and "happy" image, and this is only the beginning. The media is the largest form of communication across the world. Beginning in preschool, children are taught to accept everyone for who they are and that everybody is different.. but is that truly how America, as a whole, feels?

Did I Do That??

Ever since I came to Kutztown I've found a friend in the Rohrbach Library. Call me a nerd, but the library makes me happy. I can escape from my crazy tragic not so perfect life and lose myself within the walls of this masterpiece. I think I found the place where I belong. It relates to the rhetorics of belonging that we have consumed ourselves with over the semester. For my research paper, I'm pretty sure you're going to be excited to hear that I will probably incorporate the library some how or another. I swear (girl scouts honor) I wasn't always this nerdy.

All About Town

I have finally decided on a topic for my blog paper. I have decided to build off of the report on how Kutztown University uses space and write about how the town itself uses space and is organized. Kind of like an "All About Kutztown." Just so that makes sense it is a reference to a board game series from the early eighties. The only reason I know about the All About Town games is because I have the Scranton edition buried in my basement at home. In all seriousness however It was really kind of fascinating to walk around Kutztown and watch the buildings and people transform literally from street to street. On one street you see rows of broken down houses, garages with smashed windows, and a couple suspicious looking people that may or may not have been making a drug deal. Cut through an alley and go one street over and you see rows and rows of small, almost identical red brick houses and the only people outside are raking up leaves. In the blog report I am going to attempt to show people the many sides of Kutztown.

Well, now that my computer hung up once...

Well, let me try this again because one of
the sites I was using as a joke link hung
up my computer.

After all this talk about illegal immigration and how these so called "aliens" are stealing our jobs, not to mention our first paper on public spaces, I would really like to research something that we haven't fully touched on yet. Of course, I'm not just talking about writing a paper about this or that, but a concise idea which expands the class conversation that we have already started. With all of the things going on in Iraq, not to mention that fact that my Uncle Tom is serving his second tour with the Marines in Baghdad, I think I'd like to write something about the war in Iraq. What though, I have no idea yet... maybe something about Saddam?

...oh crap, I think my roots are showing.

Okay, so, I liked the first paper the best, with the analyzing architecture that I did. And at first I was going to do more of that type of work on architectural styles. Now, I'm leaning away from that--though bits and pieces are going to come up no matter what--since it's too broad, and just. No.

Instead I'll be writing about what I mentioned in class, how communities form their identities from the buildings around them. Need to do a lot of searching--what was the group mentioned in class last time anyway? Augh, can't remember. Anyway, let's see. I'll have to define what I mean by "community": maybe location seeping into identity? There'll certainly be mentions of culture, but focus on the buildings. Mmmm, buildings.

And what positives and negatives would creating identity like this have? Does it seem to work? How long does it take for a community to lose the identity they had during construction enough to build themselves around a new interpretation?

...I need to figure out what exactly to search for when I'm not caffinated. Because I, um, tried the large americano thing again say... 24 hours ago, and I still can kinda feel it. Oops.

And maybe throw my current main motivation into it. No, I never seem to learn. Shut up. <3

ducks are cute but they probably dont belong in pools...

this duck is not only cute but probably doesnt belong in a pool..

right now i am basically just brainstorming but i have one idea that is really top notch inmy mind...not quite top notch actually buti guess you can see workable. regardless, i remember when we discussed this article about fenway park or some park that wouldnt let people spend time there in order to keep out homeless people. im bringing this back to the concerpt of who belongs. where do homeless ppl belong and why? what can we do to help them find a place that they do belong? or is it our responsibility at all to help those in need? these are just some of the things i hope to discuss in my research paper.

my topic, hopefully

Are we out of Iraq yet? ha, just a litle post-election excitement. So I have no idea what I'm going to write about. Speaking of Iraq, that reminds me of the war on terror, racial profiling, hmmm, stereotyping. Stereotypical spaces, people, music, stereotypical genres of music for groups of people. Maybe I will look at the target audiences for various genres of music or different bands. What is the profile of the average, say, Primus fan? That's a tough one.
To investigate I could look on different bands' websites and see if that tells me anything about their audience. It would be interesting to see what bands are in it for the money, like most popular music out today, and what bands are out to make genuinely good music. I think a band's fanbase could be a decent indication of a band's main intention for creating music. For instance, if a band had a really good album, then their next album wasn't so great, maybe they tried to appeal to a wider audience and "sell out".
Also, perhaps I could examine why hip-hop has been such an enormous infuence on pop-culture the past few years. Or how any type of music has been an influence in the daily lives of the people who listen to it.

I suppose I'm supposed to brainstorm stuff for this essay tonight...such as that wall (not this wall or this wall)...or maybe other issues such as Kutztown University and mullets...but I just wanted to post a picture of Itchy and Scratchy





actual version-----------------------------------------

I came to the realization that the Earth as a whole is just one enormous "space" filled up with a variety of little "spaces." These spaces are consumed by a variety of different things. There are man made spaces and natural spaces. One key issue that must be realized is that in order for a man made space to be created, a previously natural one must be destroyed. The destruction of nature is necessary to an extent in order to advance our civilazition, but the question we must ask is when does it go from "survival of the fittest" to greed. Beaches are destroyed every day for the purpose of tourism. Natural wetland habitats are filled for strip malls. Forests are clear cut for enormous stadiums and apartment complexes. Have we, as humans, began to take more of the planet then is rightfully ours? Are we destroying the planet we call home? I hope to determine through my research the extent of the destruction of natural habitat and the exact affect that this will have on key species and habitats. I intend to determine if we are after all worse for this Earth then any other species that came before us. I think I will probably focus more on the marine spaces because this topic is so broad.

a) Pictures were not uploading for some reason tonight? (I got one picture to work, still confused why?)
b) I swear I had all the links worked out then I hit spell check and it deleted them so I'm to pissed to do it again right now, maybe later tonight. (edit:now putting them in...again)

Why we hate

In this class, the topic of language and the barriers it creates has been covered extensively. Closely linked to this topic are the issues of language discrimination and how this ties to racism. In my anthropology class, we recently watched "Two Towns of Jasper." This sparked a conversation surrounding the different histories involved and how these affected their interpretation of the event. It would be interesting to research both immigrant histories and white history, from the standpoint of both races on each other and on themselves, and show how these experiences have affected the current issue of racism.

The most obvious place to begin is with those who are among the "typical american" population- those who are of the older generation and are strongly opposed to the influx of illegal immigrants, particularly Mexicans. They may just be resistant to change or still affected by the racist history they grew up in.

Then there are those who have seen and experienced the negatives brought about by illegal immigration. They are among the seemingly small group of people who have a difinative reason for disliking illegal immigrants. The book Looking for America in Chicago details how some people feel threatened by the immigrant influence in America and how they feel this is affecting their culture, their lives, and their voice.

Some Americans, buisinesses and private citizens live to exploit the fact that illegals cant speak out for themselves without risking exposure and deportation. Some are immigrants themselves, who having come here legally have little respect for those who give them a bad reputation.

The overwhelming consensus seems to be that everyone in America hates illegal immigrants, but there are those who strongly support, if not their actions, their rights as human beings.
These foundations compose the group that is "Americans for the Outsiders." They are concerned with making sure the rights of immigrants are protected.

Unfortuately, but maybe not suprisingly, it is very difficult to find any information coming directly from the immigrants themselves. However, there are some first hand accounts, which provide intersting insight into how they feel they are perceived by outsiders and how immigration has and is affecting them.

blog paper!

So, I deleted what I had written here before. Why? Because that's not really what I want to write about. I'm so SICK of computers [and I'm a Computer Science major.. yikes!].

Anyway, I pulled out some of my old schoolwork the other day to look for some old notes of mine, and I came across my photography binder. I'm a closet artist [gasp], and in high school I took two black and white photography courses amongst others, but the photography was my favourite. The last project we did concentrated on photographing a theme.. and we got to wander around Philadelphia for a day to do it. So I picked communication... and I shot four rolls of 36-frame film on it.

That's the backstory to my idea for this paper. I wanted to take a look at how communication influences the rhetorics of belonging that we studied.. how maybe, by communicating with a society through art, graffiti, writing, or regular old speech, someone could feel like they were a bigger part of a society - and how when people don't communicate, you don't assimilate, you don't become one with the society. Does that make any sense? I hope it does. I kind of wanted to be able to, as a part of being able to "research" this topic, walk around campus and Main Street and take pictures of anything that communication applied to - kind of like a photojournalistic type of paper... the point of this paper, I'm thinking, is to prove that maybe, through communicating in many different senses of the word [reading a newspaper, grafitti, etc] with something or someone, you felt like a better part of [insert place here - probably Kutztown, since unless I walk around Philadelphia over Thanksgiving or use the pictures I already have, ...]. Instead of researching it through articles [well, I guess I could find articles by artists, or something like that], it would be more of a field-research paper, I guess. I hope this all makes sense in words!! :
What do you guys think? Trash the idea, or work on it a little more, or ...?

Ricketts Glen

Well I don't really know what I am doing for my final paper. I was thinking about writing about space, perhaps space by Ricketts Glen or Red Rock. It's beautiful up there. But really I'm going to need alot more thought about what I am going to write about. Ricketts Glen is known for its falls. Alot of senior portraits are done there and people from all over vacation on the mountain. There's a Lake at the top of the Mountain called Lake Jean. It's an older state park. It was close to being a national park but that never happened. You should visit, but don't litter!:)

Delish Babes in Politics? mm mm Good!

Surprise! It's me. So, class got me thinking on Monday--thinking of some sort of silly, intriguing topic that fits me, fits the type of junk I enjoy-- I don't know if this really applies, if we really "talked about it" in class...but I'm thinking---let me bounce off of my love and admiration for Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta, and the article that described him as a "dapper 50 year old mayor..," and let me focus on the effect that appearance has in politics, the effect it has on particular issues, the effect on the public's perception of this person, etc. etc.---but I don't know. We didn't focus on it, per say--at least not much, I know I personally brought it up though, so we'll see--it's like, I'm trying to take the issue of language, of immigration, of visual imagery, of public discourse, and roll it all in to a big ball, and then stretch that ball....like, a lot.

SIDEBAR: Would Marilyn have sung Happy Birthday to JFK if he wasn't handsome?

Would Billy and Monica have messed around if he looked like this?

It is HIGHLY unlikey...and part of the reason I'm fascinated with this whole appearance topic, and the idea that perhaps politics is just one big beauty contest.

(((((Maybe I'm just lonesome for a man, and that's forcing me to look up pictures of babely old guys. Maybe it's my love of tough men--you know, no messin' around--I told a friend once that Joaquin Phoenix as Commodus in Gladiator was my ideal man--he came to the conclusion, from that statement, that I want a maniacal, evil, horrible, pasty-white mate. )))))

That all sounds nasty.
Nasty, but true.
What do you think?

My father is an alien

Growing up my friends would often ask why my dad was different than me but I never really noticed anything wierd about him. They would say that he talked funny and looked different than me. One day my friend Jon-Jon asked me what it was like having an alien as a daddy. I laughed but realized he was dead serious. He said that he had heard his parents talking and they said my dad was an alien. So I went home and told my mom the horrible news since I assumed she had been duped, that she had married a martian. She smiled and told my dad and he explained to me that since he was from another country he was considered an alien to this country just like how Martians are aliens to our planet. He showed me his green card which is actually pink and explained to me what it meant.
It took me many years after that day to fully understand the significance of that piece of lamanated paper he held in his hands.While doing research for the illegal immigration paper I stumbled across a lot of reports of people saying that the reason why there are so many illegal immigrants is becuase it is so difficult to become legal. Many people can only dream of getting their hands on green cards and I realized how lucky my father was to get one. So after doing so much research on illegal immigration I would like to study the opposite end of the spectrum, the process of how to become a legal immigrant. I would research the many types of visas there are both temporary and permant and the steps involved in become a natuarlized citizen.

Edit: After searching for more articles on green cards and immigration I found this one interesting website that portrays "do it yourself immigration." The website sells kits for people who are trying to get green cards, visas or citizenship legally. The kits include step by step instructions on how one can gain legal entrance into the U.S.A for a mere $60. One of the kits is made for people marrying a U.S. citizen and this reminded me of the movie Green Card which is about an annoying Frenchman who marries an American woman that he does not know so that he can gain a green card. So after looking into all of this I definatly want to include the extent of money and time that some people are willing to spend in order to gain residence in the U.S.

How do you become part of the American club?

Throughout the class discussions of immigration, I remember wondering several times why immigrants just didn't become American citizens. I didn't know much about it and it seemed other people didn't know too much about it either. It might help me to understand why a seemingly simple solution might not be so simple after all. I think it would be interesting to look into the naturalization process and what it entails.

It seems strange to me that someone can be born in this country and automatically have the distinction of an American citizen. Babies are only learning to open their eyes so they have no say in the matter. No one asks them whether or not they want to be part of this country. Yet, you have full grown adults with the desire to be part of America and this country is seemingly making it a challenge for them to do that.

Immigration is such a hot topic right now, it's been talked about in almost all of my classes this semester and I would really like to learn about all sides of this issue, especially when it comes to possible solutions.

Banana Boats

So, I've been thinking about bananas a lot lately. I'm not sure why... My boyfriend gave me one yesterday, and ever since I just can't get them out of my mind. Also, something that was strange, yesterday evening I ate another one and it had a Curious George sticker on it. Weird. I keep thinking they must have some relationship with immigration - but I'm still thinking. Anyway, bananas got me thinking about the song Day-O by Harry Belafonte. It's really a great song. As I continued to let my mind wander, I remembered that this song was used in Tim Burton's Betelgeuse. I love this movie... I haven't seen it in years, but I'm definitely going to again soon. I also came across this slightly humorous animation about Osama Bin Laden. And in the end I really have no idea what I'll be doing for the next paper. Let's just hope we get our papers back tomorrow (and that the democrats get a clean sweep in this election - god knows we need it)!

Standardized Me, Scotty

I was thinking about immigration and the way that Hazleton is printing important documents only in English when I thought about the standardized testing that keeps coming up in my Perspectives on American Education class. Standarized testing is very controversal with both sides vemenously defend their veiw. Unforunately both sides insist that they have what is best for the students in mind. These standardized tests cause problems for many children that have spoken English their entire lives. The PSSAs are given in English, so what about those students for whom English is a second language or haven’t had time to learn much English yet. Students that just moved into the country that have only a very basic knowledge of English have to take this test. Those students logically probably won’t be doing particularly well on that test. Those students could know the information and understand it, but if they aren’t “proficient” at reading English, they may not know what the question is even asking. As for math, these students may do better at math, but they probalby wont' be able to explain the problem in English or understand some of the word problems on the test. Some of the word problems confuse English "proficient" students with what they are asking, expecting a student that is just learning English to understand these is irrational.
As for the title, I just couldn't get the picture of young students lined up to get to go through the transporter, but to be become exactly alike instead to go somewhere else. Instead of "Beam Me Up, Scotty," it was a weird form of conformity. That made me think of A Winkle in Time and the planet where "It" rules all to the point where all small children play outside at a certain time each day each bouncing a ball in illusion. I realize this is probably one of the fallacies from pysch class, but it's what i thought of. Feedback anyone??

HELP!!!!!!!!!!!

Alright...so I'm really pissed because I just typed this and my computer decided to be mean and delete it all for no reason. So, here we go again for the second try.

I was thinking about the first paper that we wrote, looking at the space of Kutztown. In that paper I remember mentioning the importance of education. I thought this might be a good topic for my paper. Why is education important? Why do we need education? These are things that I could go from. Since we never talked about this issue directly in class I feel that it would add a lot to our class converstation.

I also got thinking about the last paper we did on illegal immigration. It was something that really caught my interest, and I would kind of like to look into it more. I'm not exactly sure what I would do with this issue though. Maybe, I could combine this topic and the importance of education idea and come up with something like educating immigrants. I could look into this issue and see if there are multiple sides to it, and what those sides are. I could look at the different ways in which immigrants (illegal and legal) are educated. This way I would be looking at immigration in a way that wouldn't be killing the issue.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After thinking about it I think I've decided not to do the topic of educating immigrants, but rather just the topic of the importance of education. I could look at the different benefits of education. There are obvious reason, but maybe I could find some other reasons. I'm not sure exactly what I'm looking for...but I'll know when I find it. I could use statistics to show the importance of education also, that way there will be some proof.

I'm not sure if this is exactly what I want to focus on. I know I want to do something with education...I just can't quite figure out what. It probally doesn't help that I have way too much other school work on my mind right now. Maybe later today in class someone will be able to help me out with an idea...HELP!!!! PLEASE!!!!

Rewinding A Bit

This is an awesome picture I took after we wrote the first paper. It was taken by the front of DeFrancesco, and I know you can't see, but 75% of the people in the picture are smoking - completely solidifying my point. Enjoy.

What are you talking about Mahoney???

Here I sit...bewildered? Maybe, but thinking about my research assignment. I am thinking about immigration...but I've heard a lot about that. What's really on my mind is the elections. No, not the Nicaraguan elections and Daniel Ortega the former Sandinista leader. Nope. the Mid-term elections...especially in Pennsylvania.