iMedia: Street Chalk Drawings

          Sidewalk chalk... ah, to be a kid again. I remember back in the day, I used to spend hours out in the summer heat in front of my Chicago home drawing stick figures, animals and suns on the sidewalk with my older brother. But this seemingly childish medium is not just for fingerpainters and bedwetters.

        There is a growing movement in the art world known as "street art" and while street art has been around since cities themselves, only in the past decade has the art world started to acknowledge street art as a real art form and not just graffiti. Graffiti can be very cool looking, of course, but usually is a way of marking gang territory or spreading malicious word. Street art has meaning. Most street artists make sure that their "tags" are in places in cities that need "brightening", in other words, look better than they did before. They make sure not to damage beautiful architecture and classic buildings. Most street artists use subliminal messages, word play or creative images to get across societal messages.

        One growing form of street art is Street Chalk Drawing. Street artists specializing in chalk drawing will reserve blocks of sidewalk normally in busy areas, but ones with realtively large areas to walk such as town squares or mall sidewalk. This is so people don't walk on their work. Chalk artists can make money from either admiring donaters (the same way a street performer would make money) or being commissioned by the city. Much of chalk drawings are done in the form of optical illusions that look as if their is a hole in the sidewalk or that an object is popping up from the sidewalk. Others are made to look as if their is a textile draped on the concrete and some are similar to murals.

        I think the street art movement is a good thing. It is a good way to spread positive messages and as long as they are put in the right places can beautify a city. Plus, being the rebel that I am, I'm always down for sticking it to the man. Chalk drawings especially I am in support of as they are fun, look nice and provide a source of income for local artists.

An Inconveniant Truth: The Smart Kids Aren't Cool

          I'm almost done with my high school career, just one month to go. This year I realized looking back at high school how silly I was for buying into high school problems and giving myself a hard time over stupid things like high school drama. I feel bad for those kids who have yet to come to the realization that popularity really means nothing and the people that you hang out with should be the ones who you find most interesting and enjoy being around the most. Through finding this out I have realized one of the terrible truths of the high school social contruct: that, for the most part, being smart and being "cool" are mutually exclusive.
          I love to joke around and have fun as much as the next person, but I've come to value people that I can actually have an intelligent conversation with. Funny thing is, until this year that was never something that concerned me. In fact, people who speak with diverse vocabulary were often ridiculed the first few years of high school. Kids who put in the most time on homework were the "nerds." Kids with high intelligence levels would play dumb in order to seem cool and bad grades were rewarded with laughter and high fives. Good music and lyrics were turned away and the cool kids listened to radio music and popular hip-hop. Reading was almost completely shunned as an activity.
        As a senior, I have noticed many other seniors maturing and coming out of these tendencies. Sadly, as a P.E. leader I have noticed most freshman entering these same tendencies with the unathletic kids (especially boys) and the kids who embrace their knowledge seeming to be the outcasts. This is an inconveniant truth and it needs to change.

Blogging Around

           Doug Cummings wrote about how he approved to the fourth quarter approach in humanities and how he likes how chill class has been. I couldn't agree more:

I agree with Douglas as well as the above commenters. Many of my teachers are stressing out trying to fit in as much material as possible in the last month. This is ruining my fourth quarter senior year and I find myself spending more time worrying about how much we have to do and less about learning and having fun. The "chill" aproach is not only allowing me to enjoy humanities but also take the time to really learn and soak up what we do even if we might be going slow.

         Kara Quill wrote about Do You Mind??!! in her Best of Week blog. She liked it because she liked being able to think about her own self in a philosophical way, which I could totally relate to:

I agree with you completely about Do You Mind??!! I really enjoy doing it first and working up a mental sweat. I too like thinking about philosophical questions and getting to do a little self searching during school, something I haven't got to do since Issues and Answers ended. Very well written blog Kara.

Best of Week: What am I Waiting for?

        One of the questions posed to us this past week for Do You Mind??!! was "what are you waiting for?" At first this seems like a dumb question. Well, I'm sitting in Humanities class so what could I possibly be waiting for? ...To get my essay back ... for a classmate to give their TED presentation ... for the bell? But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the depth of the question. You don't have to be waiting for a certain event in the very near future, but everyone is waiting for something in life.
        After a few minutes of thought I realized that I was waiting for the future and what exciting events it might hold. Sure, I'm in a good time in my life. Senior year is relaxing and a lot of fun, but I can't wait for what the future holds for me. By no means am I impatient and it's not like I want some higher power to reveal my future to me, but I have a suspicion that more exciting, fascinating and fun times are right around the corner. I cannot wait for college when I can finally be independent and I can have some freedom both socially and academically. After that comes my grown up life and it is awesome yet kind of scary to think I can be whatever I want to be and do whatever I want to do, but the choices I make starting now may affect the outcome.
        So, everyone is waiting for something different. I am currently waiting for some mac and cheese to heat up in the microwave and in the long run I am waiting for my promising and (hopefully) exciting future... and I thought that was one of the best moments of the week.

Best of Week: Changing the Way We Eat

        I think the most interesting and meaningful topics that came up in class this week was when we discussed the way we eat after Hallie's TED presentation. Hallie did her presentation on Jamie Oliver- a British chef who has made it his life mission to educate the uneducated on how to eat well. He believes children need to be taught about what is healthy and what is not and how to cook good, nutritious meals while still getting enough nutrients.
        This was extremely interesting to me because I happen to know a lot about healthy eating from my upbringing. My family owns an organic farm in Wisconsin and I have been brought up eating very natural, healthy foods. In fact, my aunt's job is something like what Jamie Oliver does only on a much smaller scale. She goes around to schools in south-west Wisconsin to talk about eating healthy and to help schools increase the healthy food choices in their cafeterias.
        Another part of her speech I liked is when she offered someone either a candy bar or an apple. I think the majority of Americans (as she proved) would take the candy bar (the unhealthy choice) over the apple, but not me. Maybe that's just because I was raised eating far more apples that chocolate bars, but I hope that it's because I know better, because by that logic once Americans become more educated about the food they eat and what it's done to them they will hopefully change their eating habits.

Blogging Around

The first blog I commented on was Garret's blog titled Metacognition: Organization, Garret organized his facebook and in turn learned a lot about who his friend's were and who he really cared about, which is something that I could relate to:

I completely agree with the things you said in this post Garret. I'm not trying to be mean when I do this, but I honestly don't accept the majority of the friend requests I get. I only have a facebook to keep in touch with my real friends not so I can make someone I hardly know look popular. So, my guidelines are I will accept a friend request if I have had a conversation with you. I probably only have about 200-250 friends on facebook now and I'm proud of it. I actually read a study that proves the average person can only maintain about 150 personal relationship max at one time which proves that those friends you removed weren't really friends or even aquaintences in some cases.

The second blog post I commented on was one that Benjy did awhile back called Connection: Once and Real Life. Benjy talked about how a lot of movies try to make things seem perfect: relationships, talents, happy endings but that doesn't really portray real life very well. He then discussed how the movie Once, which we watched in class, did a good job of portraying real life and real relationships which I agreed with:

I completely agree with you on this Benjy. I think a lot of filmakers try to cater to the publics cravings for happy endings and instead sacrifice a lot of meaning in the story, because in real life not everything is a happy ending but you have to be able to find happiness no matter what kind of endings you are given. I think Once does a good job of making a pretty true to life story yet keeping it appealing to the audience. The best movies in my opinion tell it like it is and don't let sappy, set up moments catered to pleasing viewers dominate the films.

Final Blog

For my Lit Circle book I read Fareed Zakaria's The Post American World.
I looked around for another book in my class that was closely related to mine but couldn't find on I thought was that close. However, when I looked at some of the books in the other classes I noticed that one group was reading The Political Mind by George Lakoff. I read a blog written by Doug Cummings. He talks about how Lakoff writes about how politcs are changing and that it is important for liberals to not live in the past and rather use more modern politics. This is an example of changing the status quo in the geo-political landscape. That is the main idea of The Post American World. Zakaria believes the power in the world is shifting away from being dominated by the US. He believes te U.S. shouldn't live in the past and try to continue with the status quo. He believes (as Lakoff does for liberals) that they must act to modernize and go with what is currently happening.