Blog # 15

For my blog about overcoming odds I read a biography about Oprah Winfrey. She overcame many odds in her lifetime. She was born to unwed, poor, teenage parents in Koskiusko Mississippi. She was raised by her grandmother for the first six years of her life, where her grandma taught her to love reading. From age 6 to 13 Oprah was sent back to live with her mother Vernita Lee. She was raped by a cousin when she was just 9 years old and molested two other times by men close to her family. She kept this a secret and dealt with the pain by rebelling and running away from home. After this she was sent to live with her father in Nashville. She got pregnant at age 14 and gave birth to a stillborn baby. At this point in her life, she decided it was time to make some changes. Her father was very strict and forced a very disciplined lifestyle on her at a young age... he even required her to read and write a book report on a new book weekly. When she was nineteen, she landed her first job as a reporter for a radio station, then went to Tennessee State University to pursue this career. In 1976 Oprah hosted a TV show, "People are Talking", where she gained fame. She later won an academy award for her role in Stephen Spielbergs 'The Color Purple' and now has her own show, The Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah's story is inspirational because she overcame so many odds and completely turned her life around for the better and she is an amazing woman.

Walker, Victoria. "Oprah Winfrey Biography." Essortment. 4 June 2002. 22 March 2009.

http://www.asianinfo.org/asianinfo/china/pro-education.htm

Blog #12

For this blog about imperialism and colonization, I am using a text from an AP world book because we are learning about this topic right now in class. The definition of colonialism, as defined in AP achiever, is "not just the sending of colonists to new lands, but the exportation of social, political, economic, and cultural structures which come to dominate the subject lands and seek to supplant similar indigenous or traditional structures". This fits along very well with the colonization that happened in Nectar In A Sieve. Not only did the colonists arrive in the Indian village, but they changed structures as well. The social structure was changed because the new white men played a dominant and powerful role in society which revamped social statuses. Economic structures were dramatically changed, because of inflation that happened and new competition among other vendors in the marketplace. Cultural structures were also changed because of new values and ideals brought with the colonizers. This type of thing happens all throughout history. The chapter i'm reading about is specifically about British imperialism spread to India. They were originally drawn there because of available ports along the coast for the British East India company. It is interesting to be able to make connections from AP world class and our english book.


Grupe, Dixie and Reynolds, Sigrid. AP Achiever: World History. McGraw Hill, 2007.

Blog #11

For this blog about a global issue, I wanted to read about effects of global warming. I picked an article that talks about the top 5 deadliest effects of global warming. Number 1 is that disease would be able to spread much more rapidly and easier, because disease-carrying insects migrate north as it gets warmer. Scientists believe that because of this, Malaria has not been fully destroyed. Number 2 is more frequent and worst hurricanes. This is due to the temperatures rising in oceans. In one of my previous blogs about hurricane Katrina i learned that there is still tons of damage that has not been taken care of after all these years. It would be terrible to have more of those deadly hurricanes hit. Number 3 is more frequent/worse droughts and heat waves which will most dramatically affect Africa and parts of Africa. Africa already has a very scarce source of water, so this would be a huge problem and could potentially spark wars and conflicts (such as that in Sudan). Number 4 is that the past 3 effects would be costly to the economy because "Hurricanes cause billions of dollars in damage, diseases cost money to treat and control and conflicts exacerbate all of these". And lastly number 5 is that polar ice caps would melt which would cause many, many problems. This is a very serious problem that I think people definitely need to pay more attention to.

Johnson, Simon. "5 Deadliest Effects of Global Warming." Environmental Graffiti. 11 Sep. 2007

Blog #10

For this blog about a holiday I read an article about the history of Easter. Easter celebrates the resurrection of Jesus. Something that I found interesting from this article is that it is a celebration converged from three traditions: Pagan, Christian, and Hebrew. Another fact that I found interesting was that to solve the problem of what day Easter should be celebrated on, Constantine called to formation the Council of Nicaea. I remember learning about this in my AP world class but did not know that it played a crucial role in determining the day that Easter should fall on (they ended up agreeing on it being the Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox... whatever that means). I was hoping to find out where all of the stereotypical Easter traditions evolved from, such as the Easter bunny, Easter egg searches, etc. I'm not sure what these symbolize in relation to Christianity because they seem kind of unrelated take the importance off of the reason for celebration.

http://www.theholidayspot.com/easter/history/easter_history.htm