hw 57 prom initial thoughts

Well for this unit I have actually been pretty excited. I thought about this unit for a while and I really was interested in how we can possibly discuss prom and the social practices behind proms. To me prom always seemed dumb but as it approaches I feel like I will regret not going. To me prom is the time where we can all be selfish and say the things that we want or that we want to do but when we think about it prom cannot be a selfish thing because majority of people have dates so to be selfish would mean that both people would probably have no fun. Someone on class said that prom is the time where we emulate celebrities and I feel that is very true. We dress up and feel important, we act like we are important as well and we splurge our parents money on one night and we retunr home and hope we have some awesome stories to tell. Prom is a business and it doesn't care whether you have fun or not. . I thought about the steps to prom and how it was planned like a mission. How we all plan it out perfectly but in between every step there are many substeps that can lead to a bad prom or a better one. As for me I am not going to prom and I hope that doesn't upset my mom. She always wanted me to go and she sort of forced it on my older brother which enjoyed his prom a lot. She knows that I am different and I don't like to surround myself with people who party. I'm the person to stay home rather than go out and party because that's just how I am. Since my mom didn't go to her prom she wants me and my little bro to go and enjoy the night but I rather not because I hate making plans and then they get ruined so to save myself I rather not go. I feel that the way to enjoy prom is if you actually have a strong bond with the people at your school. It makes prom more emotional seeing all of your friends dressed up and looking fresh. There's more of a brotherhood bond with the guys and a sisterhood bond with the girls but I feel that in this school the brother and sister bond isn't too strong. Maybe with some people but since most of the kids in this school have known eachother for seven years it is hard for someone who came 4 years ago to all of a sudden be brotherly or sisterly with someone who's been here longer. There is social outcasting in this school in which it can make prom bad for anyone and I am willing to bet that at this upcoming prom there will be groups that separate themselves from the rest. It will be like a lunchroom setting in which there's the cool crowd and then the uncool crowd. There will be many akward moments and maybe some fun ones but overall I feel that prom is not for everyone and its not for me. Plus I don't think its the end of the world if I don't go. I rather go to internship. 3 questions I would like to explore is if there is any emotional connection between dates or is it just strictly business? What is the importance of prom for a college transition? Since when did prom become a celebration of getting intoxicated and not remembering half of the night. Is it just a new york city thing?

extra credit six feet under

Six feet under season 4 ep. 8

The show personifies death as a business. Also they make it seem as if it strikes at any time. The show cpatures death as unknown and harsh.

In the first few minutes of the show there was a lot of sexual activity. Other than that there was this man james who died in his car. He was about 80 years old and he just died in his car. There was no explanation behind his death. The scary part was when the guy jogging dound the man dead inside of his car. The guy seemed as if he were embalmed in that slouched position

Later on in the episode we find that the man who passed away was a civil engineer who his family said drove himself to his funeral. He drove into the funeral home and died and he seemed wealthy. He has a nice suit, pristine vintage car and he had a pretty good job. What his family said was that he didn't want to burden them with work when he died so he basically predetermiend his destiny and saved his family from deciding what to do so that now his family only has to greive and keep his car witbh them. It reminds me of the way that funeral directors operate. The way that the man planned things out was as if he knew exaclty when he was going to die and he didn't fight it. He accepted death and unlike many people in our society he wasn't afraid of it. His funeral was more of a joyous occasion rather than a funeral. When we have funerals they are quiet and full of tears. His funeral was full of clapping and singing. The two different cultures have very different views. This episode was more about relationships between couples rather than death. I guess you can say that everyone has a death of a relationship. The lesbian relationship crumbled. The 2 guys realtionship was dying and the man who cheated on his wife is having a bad time to. I feel like it is trying to convey the meaning that death is where we finally can be free and not stressed. Reltionships are what we get into and sacrifice a piece of ourself to make things work.

Six feet under season 4 ep 9

This episode starts with a comic book collector getting crushed by a large shelve. he was 35 years old. The show demonstrates death as being unexpected and untimely.

This episode is about mending the relationships from the last episode. Everyone is moving on and people are still dying. This shows that we all go through our problems but the world doesn't stop moving because of someone and their problems.


This episode shows that respecting the wishes of those who are deceased are very important. The collector wanted to die with his rarest comic book buried with him and even though the man he was talking to wanted the comic so bad and could have taken it, he gave it to the funeral directors so that they can bury him with the comic. This means that they believe that bhe wants this comic with him and if he didn't he wouldn't rest in peace.

Six feet under season 4 ep 10

This episode was about how they all move on from their hurt relationships and the confessions are released. The mamy girls father moves in with a woman who he had a relationship with before her current boyfriend had been with her. After their relationship ended she started over. The funeral director is finally going to see his children again and is trying to do better in his life.

This episode is mainly about how we all mess up things in our life but we try to fix them. I feel like the characters being surrounded by death makes them realize how precious family and love is. To live unhappily with regret isn't worth it. They don't want to die unexpectedly and have things that should have been done in life. The people want to all have healthy relationships and they try to make it work but its tough when the past comes up. I can realte very well to this episode. Especially the scene where ruth goes back to her husband and they discuss love and making eachother feel special again. It was very similar to something I experienced a lot of. The feeling of being unwanted and taken for granted will make anyone want to leave their life. After all we mostly don't know what we have until its gone.

hw 56 project comments

Hey ariel, I really liked your post. It was full of color and it was fun to read. I liked that it was organized neatly into sections and the pictures made me want to continue reading. I think that if you put pictures of the cemeteries that would have been cool so people know what they are looking at and reading about. Other than that you did a great job.

http://ariib17.blogspot.com/2011/05/hw-culminating-project-care-of-dead.html?showComment=1305759842533#c160176592776487853



Your post was packed with info that made it seem like the childbirth book we read but instead it was about death. I felt like I was reading a guide and it was so informative. I feel that you put tons of effort into this and your sources were very well put. This blog post included many aspects of death and how we should handle it and you did a great job covering the multiple routes one can take

http://stephengxyz.blogspot.com/2011/05/hw-55.html?showComment=1305760170072#c3388734788066116539
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These are the comments from my mentor and protege.

Mentor

Hi matt, afte reading you homework I realized something out you that I never knew. You like to write. You also love to express your ideas. I really liked how you brought together most ideals from our family. Such ideas like what your grandma said and how we believe in spirits. I loved how you recited the stories about me and my sister experiencing ghosts and spirits of relatives. You made me read the death book and I felt so sad, and then you show me the stuff you got from the death experts and you looked so shocked. I was amazed that you would learn about this in school. It is so interesting and I wish I could have learned what you and your classmates do

Protege

Hey matt. I read your blog post and it is so cool how you write about things like death. I kno me and you talk about it a lot on the phone and we discuss weird things about the world and stuff but you really like doing things like blogs. I can tell you have so much to say and sometimes you don't get to say it. I'm so glad to have read your blog because it gives me tips and I feel so smart when I read your blogs because I know what you are talking about because me and you have spoken about it before. One tip of advice for next time I think you should definitely look at more religions. I would love to read that. Bye!


This was the type of blog i was hoping i was going to get to read tonight. I was looking for someone who was brave enough to put their own personal opinions on death and dying up on their blog. I actually really like your take on death and what happens too. I think that you make a good point with the physics plug in, and you were even able to use websites to further your opinion. This didn't seem like mindless rambling, it was planned and researched out of things that you have been taught. I think that is what andy is going for with his class, is to have us be able to take opinions from other sources, and then use those ideas to mold and shape our own so we can have a more complete set of views that don't seem close minded and ignorant. Although your grandma may haunt your dreams from the afterlife like she plans on, i think it is interesting that it is something that she knows she will do. I think you really had some great insights here and i enjoyed reading your blog.
Sam

extra credit harold and maude

After watching the film I felt very diifferent. I kind of saw death as never being peaceful There were sometimes during this unit when I thought that the way people die and how they celebrate deaty can be something sad but people embrace it as a part of life and they thought that it should be something we celebrate and try to enjoy. Even though its sad. In the movie, it seemed that maude, harold, and the mother were all different. Harold was obsessed and facinated by death. Maude didn't care when people died but she would always care for other thing dying such as plants. She also was very close to living very naturally meaning she didn't waste things, she cared for animals and her body. She lived eating organic things. She hated when other things died but when people died she didn't seem to comment. They can both relate because harold and maude both have this obsession with death

Harolds mother was the one who didn't care about her son doing these things. Its like she didn't even consider death ever happening which was why she was never scared and she didn't mind that her son acted like killing himself. She only showed emotion when he messed up her bathroom. Harold's mom seemed to be naiive about death and she didn't realize it even when her son tried to make her realize it. It was as if she didn't want to accept death as a real thing which is why she ignored it.

The significance of death in the three characters is that harold and maude are surrounded by death and they understand it. Harold concentrated more on illness and dying while maude focused more on care of the dead. She cared for flowers and plants like the one in the back of the stolen truck she got. Harold focused more on ways to hurt himself and it consumed his life and his relationships with other people. The mom seemed to try and break harols vicious ways but he didn't listen which made me think that harold is trying to symbolize death as inevitable in many forms while his mom symbolized us as society trying to avoid even though it is a part of us.

The theme of the funerals in the play seemed to be very sad and depressing. It rained and was very dark out. I felt that harold and maude were the alternative to emotions. They didn't seem to be affected by death because even thoguh they were physically close to it, they weren't actually close to the people dying. They made it seem like funerals shouldn't be sad times but the people there make it sad. Maude seemed to appreciate life and the beauty while harold appreciated death. As he said, "I enjoyed being dead." Maude tries to convice harold to love life and I feel that since she is older, she has lived better and experienced more than harold. I feel that he is so obsessed with death because nobody helps him to experience life and that's where maude comes in.

This movie was more interesting than I originally thought. When harold was facing death with someone who was important to him, he feared it because he didn't want her to die. He was obsessed with death but once it came to him he automatically cried. This makes me feel like no matter how much we prepare for it we will still be unprepared for it. Its not everyday where we love someone such as harold loved maude. Once we lose that person we lose who we were. We feel that we exist onlyy lif they do. Harold felt like the only way he existed is if maude. He loved her and she died making harold all alone again as if nobody cared for him. This makes me feel like we can all talk about it but once it happens to someone close to us it changes who we are. Harold not being with maude I think made him appreciate life a bit more than in the beginning of the movie.

hw 55 culminating project.

theological perspectives vs spirits in the sky

My family believes in god. We all believe that there are spirits of dead which surround us all in every way. My grandma always says that she's gonna be watching us after she dies. She believes that our bodies will go away but who we are is embodied in our spirit. She thinks that our spirits will live on forever we just won't be visible to the living. My mother always told me stories about how she felt her dead uncle pull her leg while her and her sister slept. My aunt also told me stories about how she woke up in my old apartment to the sight of a woman in a white gown standing right above her. She told me how she didn't want to move and that the woman looked just like my dads mother. She always tells me that it was my dad's mom visiting him. All these stories freak me out but I feel that it is possible that the dead are still amongst the living. I feel that we are all a form of energy. In physics they say energy cannot be created nor destroyed. Only transferred or transformed. I feel that energy is with us when we are born. The moment we breathe. When we die that energy just comes out of us as a spirit. I really believe that after we die we go through another phase in life. Sort of like being ressurected. We may come bak as another person or another creature. I feel that it is not crazy to think this. Being ressurected is a way for us to live again without realizing that we even died. Roman catholic belief says, "The "souls of those who have died in the state of grace suffer for a time a purging that prepares them to enter heaven." Souls spend time in Purgatory until fully cleansed of
the temporal consequences of sin that were accumulated during life. (Religioustolerance.org). This is exaclty what I think. I feel like once we die we float up into the sky and we face a panel of judges who discuss where you shall spend the rest of eternity. The highest authorities in the sky will cleanse your soul and rid you of every wrong thing and then we will either be clean enough for heaven or we will be spending time in hell for terrible sins. It is scary to think this way but I feel comfortable thinking this way because it gives me a sense of security. I think religion in general gives people a sense of security in that they know that their souls will be saved and they will spend eternity in paradise. I researched catholic christians and it said that they believe in some sort of heaven and hell and they also believe in purgatory which is like a place where people spend some time if they have unconfessed sins. It is like even when we die we aren't free. There are people judging us and sending us to places. I feel that we have all lived before just as different a different energy. For example my physical being has existed before maybe millions of years ago but it was a different spirit in my body. I feel that when I die I will come back as something else. Depending on what I have done in life I may come back as a very honorable thing or not. My mother believes that snakes are the devils pet and she thinks that if we were to be ressurected and come back as a snake, it is the worst thing because snakes are slimy and they represent evil.

In my family we all feel that the dead have powers that we can only dream of. The dead have the power to insert themsleves into our dreams or into our reality. This is how we come up with the idea of ghosts and spirits. catholics believe that they are 2 different things. To be a ghost means that we are evil and ghosts are considered to be sinners and people who work with the devil. To be a spirit means to be at peace and to be a guardian to those you love the most. Spirits are gods angels while ghosts are the devils demons. Putting beliefs into the death inustry makes for people to become scared into doing good. We get scared into not sinning and living well lives because we don't want to be ghosts. My grandma thinks she will come back as a spirit to watch after us. After the death of someone in my family we always feel like to forget about them is the best thing but they have not forgotten about us. Nobody really knows the answer to what happens after death. Religion freaks may believe that we all come back as a certain thing or that we will live in paradise and have many virgins by our side. All of these stories cannot be validated but we accept them because we are afraid. We don't want to think that after we die all we see is darkness for eternity. There has to be something else in store for us. Some religions think that we will come back as something more magical and honorable. Other religions such as catholiscism believe that we will live on as spirits and and entities which cannot communicate with the living but can manipulate the living. The biggest mystery in life is what happens when we die. We hear stories of people having outer body experiences and seeing white lights. Is this true or is this something said to keep us feeling happy that life goes on. Whatever happens when we die is a big secret which cannot ever be validated because evidence is very slim and very forgeable. What we need to understand is that we all live the ways we want to and that we all have a death that awaits us but it shouldn't stop us from living, it should enoccourage us to do greater and whether we are ressurected or transformed into energy, we should appreciate what we have and death will surprise us all as we may all experience it differently depending on the individual.

hw 52 third of the book

this part of the book was the saddest part. In this final part the author spoke about how families regret the things they said and did to family members but by the time they realized it, it was too late. The story about the father and his little daughter was tough because he would always tell her things like, "its bad enough you are a girl but you don't have to be dumb too." Saying this to a 4 year old is unaccceptable. He hated the fact that he had a daughter because as a working man he wanted to get his whole family involved in working but with a girl as a child it was one less person helping. She was killed by a car and it was tough because she was so badly hurt that she was bald because surgeons had to perform surgery. It didn't work. She died and the father couldn't control himself. He went so far as to going to her grave and digging her up with his hands but he couldnt because there were too many rocks. He regrets the way he treated her and by the time he realized that she was a beautiful young girl who wanted to be loved, she was already dead. He then says, "I would do anything to get her back." This is something that happens a lot where we treat people bad until they are gone and we feel like crap for treating them the ways we did. It is true that you don't know what you have until its gone.

Reading this made me sad because I thought back to the things I said to people and the things I wish I had said. Like my neighbor who was 21 and passed away a day after new years 2011. Me and him were so different yet I looked at him like he was a big brother. We would hang out and he was scary to me at first but I realized that he was a good kid and he just grew up not knowing better. We had really cool times and he made me laugh and when he passed away I was so shocked because its like you see this person one day and the next they are laying motionless on a hospital bed. Its so surreal. The one thing I regret was not paying my final respects to him and I feel really bad because he was a really great guy who literally gave me so much wisdom and guidance in the time I was living here. He was like my guide and for him to leave I was angry. I wish I could have been at his funeral and said one last thing to him but I didn't and I feel terrible about that. I had a dream about him the other night and he looked happy he told me he was okay and I believed him. I told him what I had to say and then I woke up. I felt so weird and I felt like he was listening. I plan on making a trip to see him someday soon at his grave. Its just so sad when things like this happen because it makes me feel bad. It makes me feel like I betrayed him by not being there.

hw 51 second part of the book

this part spoke about how june nadle had a roomate named erma who soon became her very close friend. Erma got really sick especially because she had a heart murmur. Doctors had trouble giving information on and it soon became an illness that had a 50 percent chance of survival after she had done surgery. She went through with the operation and got sick once again but this time it was fatal and her friend erma died. She was to be embalmed but june couldn't do it because she was way too emotional. She found that emotions impact her and her job. She couldn't bear to see her friend dead and being embalmed so she chose not to do it and that shows how death can impact your psycological state." Death and tragedy is a reality of life but together we must face it. In order to heal and continue living our lives." This quote from the author herself shows that we all greive in many ways and we know that we will die but it becomes so surreal and threatening when it strikes out of the blue and takes someone you love. To understand death and to speak about it will make the fear factor that we all have about death lower because we will have knowledge and not be so naiive about it. As hard as it is to speak about, we all have to do it. Maybe it will help us so we live more significantly instead of just getting by in life.It was very sad reading this because its like we all have a weak spot and no matter who we are or what we do there will always be something to impact us.