Update

My survey still needs to have people do it but other then that I know I will use the Critical Theory for my paper and I have begun writing the first two paragraphs of my paper but the main thing is having people complete my survey!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/YFQTBBV

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/YFQTBBV

Survey Results

When conducting my survey I asked several girls and boys from my floor. Most people said that they would buy SOME fruit when it is out of season just because they crave it so much and can't tell the difference. When someone wants strawberries they will not just not eat them because they are out of season. Most people said that there is a change in taste but it isnt a drastic change. Vegetables were a bigger problem to people though because when a vegetable is out of season or wasn't properly grown right it has a specifically different taste.

1.       Do you buy food from local food stands (vegetables/fruits)? Yes or no

2.       If these foods were not “in season” would you still buy them? Yes or no

3.       If you answered yes to the above question, why or why not?

4.       Do you believe they taste or look different whether they are in season or not?

5.       Do you think that because they aren’t in season, something is wrong with them?

6.       Do you think In Season foods are better than out of season foods?

7.       Do you think that In Season vegetables are better than in season Fruits?

8.       What about out of season vegetables versus out of season fruits?

9.       Do you think that most people worry about whether it is in season or out of season?

10. What is your view on local foods in general?

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?PREVIEW_MODE=DO_NOT_USE_THIS_LINK_FOR_COLLECTION&sm=%2fUAvadzaFQQyG%2fmf3ljXYfkFk1XRxVL5V3YDPk%2fnDvY%3d

Indigenous Resistance and Racist Schooling on the Borders of Empires: Coast Salish Cultural Survival

In this article I learned that there are two places, British Columbia and Washington State inhabit a region where they negotiate the contrasting policies of two different empires. This articles shows educational policies that contrast each other across the Canada and US border.  Some of the community strategies for resisting assimilation have included reclaiming government boarding schools as a way to escape the racism of integrated public schools. Coast Salish efforts at decolonising education have concentrated on the maintenance of cultural boundaries, challenging neoliberal assumptions about history while defending treaties and land claims. Both British and American colonialism required categorising, dividing, and confining Aboriginal people.

Sustainability

Most of the food that we find today in supermarkets are highly processed and hold many additives. Alot people aren't aware of this when they are shopping for groceries. All the substances that are being added to the food are just for the taste and color, so it is more appealing to the eye. Air pollution also traces back to sustainability because the use of fossil fuels are used to power the vehicles that carry the industrialized food around. Antiboitics are put in animals to make them grow faster and because of the poor conditions of factories that the animals are put into. Putting these antibiotics in animals is harmful for humans because it makes our bodies antibiotic-resistant to the bacteria. A way to help not only yourself but others from having these problems is eating locally. That way you know what is in your food and what is not.

Environmental Ethics

This picture dipicts deforestation and the harmful effects that is doing to our environment.

Here is Bill McKibbens article on nature:

http://www.billmckibben.com/articles.html

This website as a bunch of different relating to the issues that occur in our society and even has a book called the "The End of Nature." All of his novels vary in topics from global warming to genetic engineering in your family.

Fracking

In this article, the main concern is fracking. One of the biggest problems is the safety of our drinking water due to fracking. Fracking helps us, but the way that it is being used right now isn't safe for us in the long run. There has been complaints of foul water in places such as Pavillion. In 2008 there were traces of hydrocarbons and traces of contaminents in there that seem like it could be related to fracking. It was confirmed later that there was over 1,000 traces of carcinogenic chemicals in the water and a chemical compound that has been known to be used during fracking. The EPA at first refused to believe it had been caused by fracking. Today, after other tests have been made it has been confirmed that these problems in the water were caused by fracking. It is scary to think about this becuase it makes you wonder about the water you drink so carelessly. When in reactuality that water probably has dangerous compounds in it just like this water from Wyoming did. Fracking always will present a risk to water resources but it seems like that it is risk that the EPA is willing to risk. Now it is becoming a risk and a debate between the agency. This is likely to shape how the country relates natural resources. There needs to be much stronger rules put in place about fracking so it is used carefully and reduces threats to drinking water.

Richard Kahn

In my opinion when you go to a private school, chances are the education and circulum will be more challenging then a public schools. Although at a private school you have the chance to take honors and AP classes. I think it is up to the student how much effort they put into it. It is easy to graduate from a public school, no problem but with a private school it takes more effort. Once students get to college each one of them have a different education than another one. Thats why for some people it almost hurts them in the long run because it makes their GPA's look worse then they are. Some ways to fix this is to make  public school as a whole more challenging for everyone. Everyone should be required to take at least honors class so no one is treated "different." Even though at my school honors and regular classes didn't seem much different. It would at least label the fact that students actually need to try to pass high school. It all goes back to how much effort someone puts into it. If it isn't a lot of effort then it will show in the colleges that they may or may not get accepted too.

In no matter, never mind Gary Snyder basically talks about the rebirthing of new life. It talks about how a mother and a father base their life off their children. This is a different change in how Snyder writes because usually he is negative and talks about the earth and how it is decreasing in resources. He says that the child is "Matter" and and "LIFE."
In  Coyote Valley Spring  he shows his sensitive side for animals and how so many things can be happening where animals are and then he slowly shifts over to people floating away in boats. In this poem I think he is trying to make animals seem like a bigger deal to people because usually people overlook animals feelings. He is completely right though because people need to be more aware of their actions towards not only animals but their habitat as well.
Pine Tree Tops is also like that the poem above because it points out once again his love for animals. His last sentence says "what do we know." He is right. I think he is just pointing out that animals are important to our region and society and most the time that is taken for granted. Some important animals are becoming instinct and endangered which isn't good for them as well as for us because we depend on animals for food and other things.

More Gary Snyder poems

In The Dead by the Side of the Road, I think Snyder is trying to get the point across that humans take animals for granted. When someone sees a dead animal on the side of the road it is disappointing and sad but humans don't take into thought that animals can have emotions too. The way humans use animals such as dear for survival is needed but it is also sad in a sense because the animals never got a say in it. He seems to care alot about the environment and the animals that inhabit it.
In For Nothing, once again Snyder is trying to compare earth to something as little as a flower and how humans take it for granted almost like it is just something to be stepped on. He demonstrates that Earth can easily be forgotten about. If Earth is not taken care of the right way then it will dwindle down into what he says "snow-trickel, feldspar, dirt." I like how Snyder uses parts of the environment to get his point across. He uses Earth to act as something so you almost picture it in your mind.
In  Tomorrow's Song,  there is discussion about The United States and it is almost in a sarcastic tone because it says we need no fossil fuel. Either Snyder is being extremely positive and open-minded or he is being sarcastic. In my opinion, I think he is trying to be open minded because in the end of this poem he talks about using the wilderness to get through. This is shocking to me because in all his other poems he has been pretty critical about humans and our useage of the environment.

Gary Snyder Themes

Gary Snyder has 2 sides to his writing. One side is dark, negative and insulting to humans and what problems we have caused in our society/environment today. Towards the end of Turtle Island is poems are positive and hold important messages.
 In The Great Mother, and a bunch of other poems in this novel he is basically talking about the wrong that everybody has done to our environment. He says in the last verse, "she looks down at their hands to see what sort of savages they were.
 In Control Burn he talks about how life was when Indians were around and how back then the world was in much better shape then it is now. His last line hints that he wishes that it would go back to how it was when indians were around.
In For the Children, it is a message to children that it is up to them if our society even exists in the future. He says that we are declining as a whole and that the most recent generation are the ones to fix that.

The environment is obviously an important theme through Snyder's writing. He makes it very clear that he wants something to be done to help our society or even somehow go back to how it was years ago, which in my opinion is hard to do with all the developments that have been made. He even has a fact sheet on page 31 about the U.S and facts about our country.

Bill Mckibben's Podcast

In this podcast, the author talks about how modern humans as a whole have permanently altered the universe. The universe is no longer the same and resources such as fossil fuels are running scarce. The world we used to live in was more suffiencent then this. That is why he chose to spell Earth "Eaarth", because it has fully changed. The main argument made by this author is that relentless growth has fundamentally changed the environment. There is no longer any capacity left to hold or money left to spend. The author suggests alternative methods to get by such as: a food system that doesn't depend on an intense amount of fossil fuels, having durability as a virtue instead of growth, and changing the price of energy to reflects the damage on society. A good point was made during this podcast that local agriculture around the country is flourishing so that should be taken advantage of. The bioregional quiz was a good website to be familiar with because the quiz put my lifestyle in perspective for me.

Environmental Issue

Out of the many problems that our world faces today, I would say the depletion of resources is most important one. What is everyone going to do when day to day resources such as food, gas, water is gone? No one actually understands the severity of this problem. Nor does anyone think it will actually happen in their lifetime. Well their wrong. The United States is a perfect example for this problem because we are very greedy when it comes to resources. We, as a country, use the most resources out of any country out there.
In the article I read  Obama calls to end subsidies on gas and oil prices because he now too realizes what it is doing to our country. We consume 20% of the worlds oil and are going through it way to fast. At this rate there wont be anything left for not only us when we are adults, but people that have yet to be born. I, myself am to blame for this because everyone does it without realizing the harmful  effects that it puts on our environment. I would say that we need to raise more awareness on this subject and  put a limit on important things that we will need in the future to survive.
There is no certain place that this issue harms specifically the most except maybe industrial cities such as New York but in the end everyone is going to be in trouble because the resources will run out everywhere, not just in New York. One of the main ways to lower this from happening is that everyone condenses the amounts of things that they use and are more aware of how this is effecting the environment and themselves in the long run. Always remember the three R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Without doing this our world will surely decease.

This is a link to the article I researched involving the shortages of our resources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/02/us/politics/obama-calls-for-an-end-to-subsidies-for-oil-and-gas-companies.html?ref=reservesnaturalresources

Island Civilization

In the essay, “Island Civilization” Roddrick Frazier Nash analyzes how the environment was evolved other the past millenniums. In some ways I agree with Nash because he points out that the reason our wilderness in decreasing is because of the treatment of humans and that is completely true. Over the past 100 years the wilderness isn’t the main concern in the world today. It has grown to be the production of businesses and the growth of our world today as a whole. In the past, the world was full of wildlife now when you look into rivers, lakes and other bodies of water it is completely deserted.

            Humans have taken the technology available today and have left the wilderness out in the cold. We as people used to live and thrive off the wildlife for food and clothing. Now in the third millennium it is like humans have not learned to share the environment with everyone, most importantly the animals that for the time being inhabit it and have since the beginning of time. We have gotten greedy about how we think about other inhabits such as animals that walk this earth. What will happen in the fourth millennium?

            According to this article we are on a downward spiral to extinction of many animals and inhabit that have lived and roamed here since the beginning of time. Nash has several ways to help this problem but the one that I didn’t agree with was lowering the population. Of course the population is huge and growing by the second but how are you supposed to just eliminate a good amount of people live on this earth? There has got to be a better way to change the course of this problem. If the people wanted to live in the fourth millennium and just have technical lifestyle then that is what is bound to happen in the future.

            In my opinion I agree with Nash, although it is easier said than done. You can’t just change all that has developed in a blink of an eye. It’s not that simple. On the other hand, there needs to be a drastic change in the way we share our environment. Most people don't realize how much a problem this is in our world but without all these resources left  on earth what will we do? Its just something to think about....