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Philadelphian Food Deserts

Hi! During my last two posts, I talked about the food access in Philly. In my first one,I explained how social this issue was and how hard it was for someone who lived in a disfavored area or someone who didn’t enough money to get healthy food. In my second blog post, I commented the survey that I sent to people. All in all, I was nicely surprised by what the people told me because I actually thought the situation was even worst.

While doing more researches, I discovered really positive changes and actions in Philadelphia during the last couple years. The most relevant for me was a man named Jeff Brown who built big food stores in food deserts, like North Philly. For more information, you can click on that link which will lead you to a very interesting video that is describing this process. For me, this way to change is just the best, the most accurate and also the more logical: how to fix food deserts problem? Just build a food store! This helps a really big amount of people and is one of the best solution to this problem.

At the beginning, I didn’t know what I was able to do for my Agent of Change, but Ms.Giknis gave me a good option: giving a map in a Philly food desert with all the grocery stores near them on it.

This is the kind of spots that were present in this area

I went to a North Philly area with literally nothing around. I gave my papers to people in the streets while smiling. Most of them accepted my paper and asked me more about it. Although, I had an issue: nobody wanted me to take them in picture, I don’t even know why, they probably thought I was doing tourism because I have a pretty strong accent and I don’t live here. I still took picture of the place. Besides this problem, I really felt helpful and I knew that I was making a change happens, so this is probably the most positive fact about this entire project: we are useful!

I think that I made a change because while giving them this map, smiling and explaining what was my project about, I’m pretty sure that some of the people remembered me and were aware of my issue. Also, they knew if they didn’t already where were all the healthy grocery stores near them.

Me in the area with my maps in the hand, looking if the person is coming to me...

I thought that this project was very good and I am very happy to have completed it, even if this is late! It was the first time of my life where I knew that something related to school was actually useful in a way and was making a difference. I learned that I love helping people, even if I kinda knew it already. I also learned that the people in food deserts are actually just waiting for more help and feel unlistened (even if I expected that too!). I think something I could have done better would be to meet the timelines on time, as always!  

Oya es un diosa de tormenta y vientos. Ella consiguió sus poderes porque un dia cuando ella tenía 9 ella tiene succiono en un tornado. Ella estaba vistiendo un borgoña y púrpura vestir. Fue golpeada con muchas piezas de cobre. Ella fue lanzada 2 millas de la clase. Ella fue eliminada del impacto. Se despertó a los residentes a su alrededor. 2 de los dioses en la familia se convirtió en sus hermanas fueron yemaya y oshun. Se sintió extraña después de despertarse. Se siente más viva. Nunca encontró a su verdadera familia. Asi que se convirtieron en su familia. Ella pasó a tener una gran familia propia.

My element is Vanadium. The atomic number for Vanadium is 23. Vanadium is a metal element. It can be used as an additive to steel to prevent it from rusting. When I was doing research I found out that Vanadium was discovered in mexico by Andrés Manuel del Río. the element was named after the Scandinavian goddess of beauty and fertility.

At first I wanted to create a stamp of mexico with a V in the middle, however that seemed kind of basic and boring. I then decided to look up what a fertility goddess looked like. I decided that it was a creative way to show the element Vanadium. I then tried to draw the fertility goddess as a stamp to the best of my ability. It took me a few times to get the stamp that I wanted, but I liked my final sketch.

Now that I had my sketch I had to draw it on transfer paper and flip it so that my stamp won't be backward when I use it as a stamp. I then used a 4x6 card to imprint my flipped sketch on transfer paper to the card. I used a pencil to indent my stamp. The indentation would be the positive space for my stamp. When it came time to stamp, I rolled the blue paint evenly on mt card/ stamp and placed it on a piece of paper. I then pressed on the stamp with a wooden spoon to distribute the paint on the paper. I removed my card/ stamp to reveal my element stamp. If I was to do this stamp again I would make sure that my indentations on the card were deep enough so that all of the parts that should be negative space were negative space and all the places that should be positive were positive.

My favorite part of this project was printing my stamp. It was nice seeing my stamp come alive with color. The positive space really pops and represents Vanadium the way I wanted it to.

If you’ve been following my project you would know that I am studying and learning about Masculinity and Self-Esteem. In my studies, I have discovered in my first study Masculinity is “The possession of qualities, traditionally associated with men.”  The only problem with this is that people of the world today take this meaning way too far and just use it as almost an emotional weapon. They take what these “possessions of a man” are supposed to have and apply them to every male that they encounter. If the person that they meet does not have these possessions or live up to the expectation they are immediately judged and set as an outcast towards the rest of a group or society.

For my second part of research I did a survey with a series of questions that asked people’s opinions on Gender Roles today.

The things that people are doing nowadays are helpful but few. They advise and plan trips for people with disorders as such, involving Low Self-Esteem. There are also organizations such as Good Therapy who do Psychotherapy for people with these type of issues. Like I said, the ways that they are using to help establish change are ways that will surely help but there are some problems with them. First of all, in my opinion, I think there should way more ideas that people should have came up with by now to help people. Secondly, What if there are people who can not afford things such as Therapy and vacations? Will there be a way to help them for free?

Being only, a freshman at SLA there wasn’t much that I could do like planning vacations or having Therapists. So, I did what I thought would be best. I made posters somewhat like flyers and posted them around my community and my school. On them there were quotes about gender roles and confidence, along with words of encouragement. The posters also allowed the people who saw them to write questions and comments on them. This idea originally came from me seeing something like it around the school but they all promoted their own causes and clubs. So, I thought that if they could do it, why couldn’t I? Although it was a really late decision it was pretty easy to create these posters. Thanks to Canva. To be honest, the experience wasn’t really that exciting. Although, I did get some friends to help me put up the posters where I thought they would serve their purpose best. The effect of change was half good, half okay turn out. The posters that were posted at my school didn’t get quite the reaction that I was expecting. I think that may have been part of my mistake on where I put them. Considering that the stairwell and fifth floor aren’t exactly the most used areas of the school. But when it came to outside the school, my flyers seemed to be good help to people around the neighborhood. Although, some people who told me in person that they saw my posters said that they didn’t feel comfortable with sharing their feelings and opinions.

With this combined with all the other work and projects that I had to have done all at the same time it was extremely stressful for me when doing this project. I learned something about myself, which is that, when it comes to helping the people I care about and love I usually don’t let my emotions get to me. There were many times that I almost gave up on this whole thing, but then, I remembered the people I was doing this for and that this should be about more than just a grade and that’s it. I also learned that not everything isn’t going to just come along right away, You always have to be willing to be patient and wait for a success to be fulfilled. The one thing that I could’ve done way better was having management over my time. It took me way too long to get this done and I was not putting things that mattered the most first and kept putting other things on the backburner.

To see all of my resources and sites I used check out my Annotated Bibliography here.

English 9

                                                  Singing about drugs and it’s ok

Hi there. My name is Josiah Mast and I have been attending SLA for freshman year of highschool. While there my class was given the assignment of trying to impact something that we are passionate about. I decided to do Medical and recreational Marijuana. I went with that topic because I feel that I have a real connection with the idea of marijuana being legalized so that my state and city can become a better place. Earlier in my slate post #1 and #2 I had written about how I want to be able to really change this schools view on marijuana because they believe that promoting the illegal substance should not be tolerated. I wanted to be able to show the school that by enforcing this rule that they were trapping people identities beneath their surface so that they couldn’t express their true identities. I conducted a survey and got phenomenal results from it(see slate post #2). I got help from Ellie siegel a woman that is fighting in the state of pennsylvania to make marijuana legalized for medical and recreational use. She gave me a few pointers on my first doc and then we lost contact somehow. I was wondering how I was going to come up with a slatepost 3 when I hadn’t changed anything. Than that's when it hit me that  I had changed SLA in a way. A not so long ago I had written a song about marijuana and sang it in the hallways while walking to the next class. People would run over and sing the songs and I would talk to them about how I really felt that it was wrong that medical and recreational marijuana were illegal in the state of Pa. People would agree and talk to me about how they felt. These little conversations here and there might impact them for the rest of their life. I have always said that talking to someone who is older and has made up their mind about this topic as not as useful as telling someone now when they have the next 3 years of high school and college were when they enter another conversation like the one they had with me they can think back on it and try to change others minds as well. People might just remember me while they are eating dinner in like 10 years from now and tell the story about me and use the knowledge I gave them to give to others. I am already looking back and am glad I didn’t write a letter because it probably would have been boring. It has been proven the things that are boring have less of an effect on things that are entertaining. Besides I didn’t want to do something that I wasn’t passionate about. This freshman year was all about who you are. I am not a person that writes formal letters. I write letters that are songs and that can change a freshman class’s minds on  a topic that I am passionate about.

In my previous blog post I stated that I wanted to work to stop Transphobia, I was having trouble coming up with ways to stop it seeing as it is social. My teacher Ms.Giknis offered me the opportunity to work with my friends Kenzie and Mike seeing that we had projects that focused on similar problems. While working together we brainstormed on a way to change or improve our problems. We decided that we would hold a bake sale to raise money and donate to an anti bullying foundation.

We all agreed  to hold a bake sale to raise money to donate to an anti bullying foundation. We decided on a date and what to bring. Kenzie planned to bake cookies and bring them in school. Michael planed to buy a box of donuts to bring in the day of the bake sale. The day before the sale I spent the night baking about five dozen cookies to sell at lunch. The day of the bake sale we sold all of our donuts and all of Kenzie’s cookies. During lunch I sold the cookies I baked for 25 cents a piece. The cookies were received relatively well and I sold about four out of the five dozen.

After the bake sale Kenzie And Michael and I raised 42 Dollars.After doing some research, we decided to donate the money to the Stop Bullying Now Foundation. The foundation allows access to professional speakers and counselors to stop bullying the short term. For the long term they aim to raise awareness

about bullying of all sorts. This means that they also offer help for bullying for LGBTQ kids . I feel that Mike, Kenzie and I could have raised more money if we had sold everything.  

In retrospect I wish that we had announced the bake sale so we had more people buying cookies. My entire project was rushed in the end and I wish that I did not procrastinate. But plan to do better work in the future, and I am happy that Mike Kenzie and I could come together to make a good project. I wish we had more time to make posters or generally present in front of our classmates, but i think as a group we put in effort to some sort of a change and/or raise awareness in our freshmen class and I am proud of what we did.

In Conclusion, my You and the world project was regrettably rushed. I feel like if I had put more work into it and had got my blog post finished it would have been a better project in the end. I appreciate my friend Joshua for being so open and letting me interview him. I also appreciate Mike and Kenzie for being good group members and  bringing in food for the bake sale. Hope that this project has made an impact and I am glad to have been given the opportunity to do it.  

1. What is your element? Name and atomic number

My element is Tungsten. The number is 74.

2. Tell the reader about your element, history, function/use and so on.

Tungsten was first discovered by two brothers name Juan Jose and Fausto Elhuyar when they were living in Swedin. Since tungsten is heavy, they named it tungsten because it means heavy stone in German. It was made out of minerals and tin.

3. How did you get the idea for the imagery you chose?

As I was doing research for tungsten, I came across diamonds because when diamonds were first discovered, it was heavy. So that’s when I started to draw diamond as my imagery.

4. What process did you go through to make this print?

There was a lot of process when doing this print. The first process was that drawing the diamond was hard because I have to make it perfectly semetrical. Then when it was time for printing, it was easy because there was no need to turn it backwards. While drawing it on the foam, the only thing that need to be backward was the number and the letter. While printing it, I evenly rolled the paint and then rolled it to the foam. After that, I layed a paper on top of it and then evenly rubbed it on to the paper. After that, your picture will be perfect.

5. What would you do differently if you did this print a second time?

I would try and draw another picture that is similar to tungsten

6. What part of the project did you enjoy the most? Describe the step and what you liked so much about it.