Blog Feed

• What TV show did you watch in class?

• We watched Growing Up Online

1. What was this show about?

• It was about teens who grew up in the generation of new technology and social internet interactive websites.

2. What is the most memorable thing to you about this show?

• When the boy said he never read book only the summary online and when the girl who was anorexic went on websites that praised anorexic people.

3. Why/Why not -  is it important to watch shows like these?

• It's important to watch these types of shows because it’s important to have an idea about what your kids are thinking and doing online

4. How will you keep your future family safe online?

• By telling them that everything that goes on the internet isn’t good and tell them everything that can harm them

5. Why is it important to talk with your family about internet safety

• So, that nothing happens to them and they won’t go buck wild online and to keep their reputation in tact

6. What advice would you give to parents that don't know how to keep their children safe online?

• I would tell them to show their children clips of predators online and  people's children going missing from online interactions with strangers

1.) The TV we had watched in class was called Growing up Online.

2.)This show talked about how kids were affected online and how their entire lives changed after something that was put online. They had told us about a fight that happened in their school and that it was recorded and now whenever someone looks up the kids or the school they will see the video.

3.)The most memorable thing about this show was about the girl who was a model on the internet but in real life she was a nobody.

4.)Yes it is important to watch these shows because it teaches us about the dangers of the internet and shows us how much it can affect our lives.

5.)I will keep my future family safe online by not letting them have any social media until they are of appropriate age. Also I will block any websites that are inappropriate or unsafe to children.

6.)It is important to talk to family about internet safety because they need to know how dangerous the internet is and how it can affect your future.

The TV show we watched in class is Growing Up Online.

This show was about teens being obsessed and overly using their phones, going online, and what they did online. It was also about how teens were being attacked online and those who attacked them.

The most memorable thing to me about this show was the fact that teens did everything you wouldn’t ever expect for them to do online. It was like they were living two lives. One in the real world and another online.

It is important to watch shows like this so you can get a visual image of what society was like before and what it will be like now if we continue our live’s always on online and on our phones/laptops/computers. It is also important to watch shows like this so you know what to avoid and what to do.

I will keep my future family safe online by allowing them to go online and posts things as long as they don’t have any inappropriate pictures of themselves or any negative things being said or put out there.

It is important to talk with your family about internet safety because you want to protect your family from what bad things happening online and so they don’t end up with situations online with others and/or themselves.

The TV show we watched in class was Digital Nation from WHYY.

1. This show was about teens and their life online and the comments/opinions that the adults had about it.

2. The most memorable thing to me about this show is how much effect the internet has on people especially teens.

3. It is important to watch shows like these because it allows you to see what’s not obvious to some people in detail. It is not important to watch shows like these because even though we see these things happening because of the internet, we still do the same thing. We don’t stop.

4. I will keep my future family safe online with the ability of trust and help from each other when in need.

5. It is important to talk to your family about internet safety because it can lead to a lot of bad things that’ll bring you yourself into the whole situation.

           6.   I would give them advice about one little post can lead a huge situation/problem so they should                        

                 think before they post.

Bechdel Test:

1. At least two women in it

2. Who talk to each other

3. About something besides a man

Mako Mori Test:

1. At least one female character

2. Who gets her own narrative arc

3. That is not about supporting a man’s story

My Test:

1. At least one non-white woman

2. Who talks to another woman

3. About something other than a man

Juno is an independent movie from 2007 starring Ellen Page. At the age of 16 she became pregnant after having sex with her best friend. She decides to give the child up for adoption. But this movie is about more than that. It is about the hardships of being seen as an outsider, the pain of loving someone who does not loves you back, and so much more that we all fell as people passing through this world. This movie has witty dialog, strong characters, and insightful commentary.  But how does this movie, which is written by a woman, Diablo Cody, represent women?

This movie is named after the lead character for a reason. At it’s core the move is about no one other than Juno. This movie easily passes the Bechdel test. It has multiple female characters; the main character Juno, her friend, mother, and the woman who is adopting the baby. These are the most important, but there are a few more. There are multiple situations in which the women talk to one another. There are a good amount of conversations between female characters, and even though lots of them are about male characters, enough of them are about other things that Juno passes the Bechdel test much better than plenty of other moves.

The Mako Mori Test is no match for Juno this movie never has a scene without the lead female. The narrative arc is only really about her, how she changes, what she experiences, and the good and bad decisions she makes. Even though this movie is in a lot of ways a romance too, Juno in no way depends on a man, and the parts of the story that do not include male characters are just as strong as any others. Juno’s story arc does not support a man at all, if anything the male christers are there to support her story arc.

When It came to making my own test, I wanted to focus on gender and race. I created a test that was heavily based off of the Bechdel test, but focused on the race of the female characters. Juno just barely passed this test. There is only one female character that is not white, in fact she is the only character in the whole movie who is not white. Su-Chin is an asian classmate of Juno’s who she sees outside of an abortion clinic. In this conversation Su-Chin tries to convince Juno not to abort her unborn child. This short, but important scene gives the movie a passing grade on my test, but by a slim margin.

The first piece that I created was a collage. When making my collage I went for a sort of surrealist feel. I experimented with shifting the focus, I wanted the woman to be the first thing that your eye was drawn to so I painted over almost everything else in the collage with pink acrylic paint so that it was a little less clear and didn’t pop out as much as the woman did.

The next piece that I drew was of the top of my bed from my perspective where I was sitting at the bottom of the bed. I was focusing mainly on the blankets on the bed and how the fabric laid and wrinkled and casted shadows.

Pieces three and four are photos playing with depth of field. I focused my camera on the trees that are taking up most of the pictures so that everything that was not the tree was unfocused. I put filters on the photos, so that one is black and white and kinda has a parchment paper feel. The filter I put on the second photo intensifies all of the colors so that the darks seem to cast a shadow over the photo, while the lights almost bleach it out.

Writing a personal essay may be easy for some of you. This topic, in particular, is very hit or miss. It would be simple for someone to, say, write about the relative they have that served in the military. Or perhaps a tale of their move across the country would do. An easy opportunity even exists for me. My paternal great-grandparents and their children were refugees of Hungary’s 1956 revolution, one of many of such events for the oft-ruled Hungarian people.

Of course, that’s what I thought before I checked the official wording of the assignment. Much to my chagrin, the personal essay had to be entirely personal. That is, about the writer. It’s my work. I am the writer. It is me. My silver bullet had been repossessed by the state and smelted into a limited-edition coin, to be purchased by an oblivious grandmother who swears it’ll be worth the mint it came from some day. She gives her grandson the coin, and he pretends to admire it. He knows better than to reveal his knowledge gained from the multitude of gold coins, silver coins, and fifty-state quarter collections. They will be worth no more than what she paid, if a little less. She just wanted to help. But that doesn’t matter. Those people aren’t real. What does matter is that I have nothing to write about.

Eventually, I will need to address the book I read most recently. This book is called The Yellow Birds. It is by Kevin Powers. It takes place during the Iraq War. In it, there is a character called Murph, who dies. The protagonist and a search party find his body mutilated in a bush. The protagonist, Pvt. Bartle, had promised to Murph’s mother that Murph would return. There are many things I could say to connect my life to the story at this point. I could talk about how I have broken numerous promises. Who hasn’t? However, none of my promises have resulted in anyone’s death. I could write about helping people. At least, I could write about that if I were writing a bad college admissions essay. I’m not writing a bad college admissions essay. I’m not even writing a good college admissions essay.

I could also write about my dog. Before I was born, my parents had acquired a Rottweiler named Jake. Jake was a pretty good dog. After I was born, he was very protective of me. Despite being one of the more fearsome dog breeds, he was very gentle. This was in my hometown of Concord, New Hampshire, so he had plenty of land to run around on and other, similar things that dogs like. Next to my old house, there was a frog pond. I used to really enjoy catching frogs and putting them in a five-gallon bucket filled with the water for the day. I realize now that this was not the most ethical way to have fun with frogs. We also had a sinkhole in our front yard. I used to be really scared to walk near it, for fear I would fall in. Before we packed up and headed home, I ended up falling in twice, once with my friend. Both times I fell in, I feared what may have lived beneath. Both times, there was nothing. I got out of the sinkhole, took a shower, and changed. That was it.

Now, we return to my dog. Jake lived to be about twelve, which is a reasonable for a dog. One night, around the time we moved, I was watching TV while Jake relaxed by the fireplace (his favorite thing to do in the evening) when he started howling. He did this periodically, but this was a different sort of howling from the usual. He seemed to be in distress. He fought at the forest-green carpeting with what looked like supreme fear in his eyes. The howling grew and became yelping, barking, and shouting. He flailed around with so little control that we feared he would jump into the crackling fire. His sounds became more pained. That’s when my parents told me to go upstairs as fast as I could. Being little and confused as to what was going on, I ran into my parents’ bedroom. Eventually, I fell asleep there. Jake had been having a seizure and passed away that night. I was sad for a little while. My mom was much more sad. She had trained him. Now, I don’t think of him unless someone tells me to think of something pertaining to death.

There was also a death in my family over the course of my lifetime. I don’t consider pets a part of the family, and I think it’s bizarre that some people do. You are not any more related to your pet than you are to any other animal of that species. Loving your pets is kind of weird to me too, but that’s a personal thing. Don’t call them your family. It doesn’t make sense. My family is very small, so a death is kind of an event. To provide some perspective, I am one of two people under eighteen to attend our family gatherings. The other person is about a year old. Anyway, my great-grandfather and noted singer Don Rondeau, stage name Don Rondo, died. He had cancer. We weren’t surprised.

In class we watched a show by Frontline called Digital Nation and Growing Up Online. The show was about how the Internet is becoming more of a part of our lives and how it influences us, our jobs, and our military. The most memorable thing about this show is the story about Ryan and how he committed suicide because of the things that people said about him online. It was very interesting and scary to see how something so useful like the internet can be used in so many bad ways. It is important to watch shows like this so that we do not have to repeat the things that happened and so we can prevent things like this from happening. As of now, I do not know how I am going to protect my future family for a simple reason. Since technology is progressing SO fast, I do not know what to expect from the internet and technology in general twenty years from now. But I do know that I will be monitoring all internet usage. The internet is a very dangerous thing. Even though the internet can be very helpful in more than one circumstance, it can be used for many bad purposes. Some advice I would give to parents is to make sure their kids are not involved in anything suspicious. Also I would advise them to make sure their children know about all of the dangers of the internet.

I am a rower. It is the very definition of who I am, at my core, where my body and my mind meet to create my character. Standing here at 6’2” in height, I weigh just a little bit more than I would want to share, but I know that those extra pounds are all those toned and honed muscles in my neck, back, arms and legs that have been painstakingly strengthened through years of sweat-drenching work-outs that sometimes still leave me falling asleep face-first into my dinner plate. And yet, even at my most exhausted, when raising my eyelids feels harder than it might to lift the Titanic off the floor of the Atlantic ocean floor, I row. So when anyone asks who I am, I have just one answer for them: I am a rower.

I do not see myself first as a daughter or a sister or even a typical teenager, always at the ready with the perfectly practiced eye-roll, hair-toss combination. I am not just another girl with long blondish waves, dead at the ends because of an unbreakable bond with a curling iron’s 400 degree heat setting, who loves a just a little-too bloody rare hamburger smothered in ketchup and the tangy taste of a midnight Pink Berry - plain vanilla, chocolate dipped, no nuts, please. I can spend all day under a duvet with kittens criss-crossing the headboard while I wave a laser pointer around the room trying to get the little bundles of soft fur to pounce on it’s dancing beam. I can text for hours with my friends, holding together bits and pieces of a hundred different conversation threads or snapchat seconds of silly stunts that send me into fits of laughter for days. But in the end, when the day is done, from its dawn to its goodnight moon and setting sun, I am a rower. The outside of me is flesh and bone and thoughts and deeds, good hair days and bad skin days, while inside of me will always beat the heart at the pace of a race.  

I think it’s because I’m a rower that I chose to read the Yellow Birds rather than The Things They Carried. The title of the book comes from a military marching cadence and as a rower, I know just how important cadence is in helping to drive a boat forward in the water, from catch to extraction. It is the rhythmic beat of every rower’s oar working in unison, every body synchronized to that one particular cadence, that helps us maintain a consistent stroke - oars in, oars out, feathering at a tempo that would make a symphony conductor proud, or, a drill sergeant, in this case, his troops, left-righting in harmony as a single unit from one end of a battlefield to the other.  

Without the violence and bloodshed and death that defines war, when all of the horror of it is taking out of the equation, war, at its core, like rowing, is a matter of wanting to win and hating to lose. What actually separates a soldier from a rower? We’re both the grunts on the ground and in the boats while our generals and our coaches watch, comment and command from the sidelines. A war, like a race, tries to kill us, if not literally, then definitely figuratively. It pushes us as hard as it physically can,“through the tall grass on faith, kneading paths into the windswept growth like pioneers,” as Kevin Power’s so eloquently described, towards a finish line, towards the promise and hope of a win, even if getting there leaves us too weak to even climb up the podium to collect our prize, And if we don’t win, we are given a moment’s rest, a short reprieve, before the call to re-arm and re-oar is made and we are back in the depths again, sweeping our way around the next bend, praying with every stroke that we don’t capsize or cramp out or simply “die” of exhaustion.

Like soldiers, we do not question, we do not talk back, we accept our orders from our superiors and we follow them. We do it because there is a thrill in a victory, a need to succeed, and especially a desire for praise.  We want to be heroes. We all want to be heroes, soldiers and rowers alike.

And yet we all know that not every one of us will walk away with a medal or a trophy. So we lie to ourselves. We lie to each other. We lie to everyone around us. It’s the lies we tell that propel us to back to battle. We assure ourselves that it’ll be ‘next time, next race. We weren’t ready. We didn’t know this river. The other boats were newer, better, their rowers stronger, faster. The weather, it’s always the weather against us.” The key to the excuses: the we’s and the us’s. Even in a loss, it is still us against them, a sisterhood of teammates who fight together to the finish line.

I’ve always heard of soldiers being referred to as a “band of brothers,” bonded by bloodshed if not by blood. It’s a camaraderie of combatants who keep each other alive while bullets try to pick them apart and bring them down. But in Bartle, I saw a soldier who was as much intent on his own personal survival as he was in his “brother,” Murph’s. As the war saw soldier after soldier die, violent, senseless deaths, readers saw Bartle realize the hopelessness of the promise he made to Murph’s mother to “bring her son home.” Then Bartle saw it himself.  And so the brotherhood disbanded in favor of Bartle being able to take one more breath. War makes one thing very clear, it doesn’t matter how many others come home, as long as you do. And Bartle turned his and Murph’s “us” into his own, personal “you.” The guilt of Murph’s death would torture Bartle forever after that, but the fact remained that he lived to feel that guilt every day.

No matter the circumstances, be it war or race, it seems that it comes down to the survival of self. The self that survives, survives not only to tell the tale, but tell their version of it, with no dispute from the silent, still form no longer capable of speech. They can easily create of themselves, victim, villain or hero, without opposition.

We rowing sisterhood are no different. Teammates until the end when, back on shore, behind backs and in silent whispers, we point a finger at someone’s wrongdoing. The “us” of our lies in a loss become the “hers” and “shes” of self-preservation. “Her’ stroke was off. “She” fell behind. Not my fault, “hers.” Catty and bitchy, too much like actual blood-sisters, we fight individually for our seats on that boat. There may be a next time, a next race, but it needs to be with me at the helm. The challenge is always to return. And who am I if I am not challenged by a challenge? I am, after all, a rower.                  

Every year at the end of the summer there was always a family member that would invite us to their block party. Generally they would would get permission from whoever and block off the street for a couple of hours. It was almost customary for everyone on the block to bring their grills in the middle of the street and everyone would have their doors open and blast their own music, and there was also that rare occasion where someone would pay for a dj. But every summer it was always the same thing.

I only enjoyed these sorts of events for two main reasons; it was the only time of the year where I could walk in the street, and you could literally go to anyone’s house on the block and eat their food without it being weird. I was either 4 about to turn 5 or 5 about to turn 6 and it was a big deal. Being as though I am my father’s only child, each new stage in my life is also new for him as a parent. After days of my mother trying to convince my dad that I was finally old to play with the other kids without so much supervision, my dad decided to give in and let and have very serious talk with me. He sat me down before the cookout and made me promise that I would a.) stay in front of the house b.) try not to talk to strangers and c.) stay out of trouble. At first this seemed like a very simple and very fair agreement. I figuratively signed my name in blood when I nodded my head yes in agreement with the terms and conditions that my father set forth.

Term number one: Tianna McNair is not allowed to move from in front of the house owned by Angela and Darrel Sykes. Any violation will result in extreme lecturing and confinement in Angela and Darrel Sykes home until further notice. Did Tianna live up to the terms of this agreement: Nope. As we were pulling up the my aunt’s house any normal person would be able to see a block party but all that I could see was my own new found freedom. I made my rounds of hellos and quick pecks on the cheek and I finally made it out the house with my sanity. I tried playing with my cousins but they were all boys and had no interest in babysitting a little girl. I then took it upon my own hands to find some people who I could relate to, people who were young and adventurous like me. So I walked up the street and found a group of kids playing tag. This back and forth and back and forth became way too repetitive in a short amount of time. Suddenly someone brought out their brand new razor scooter with the blue accent pieces. We all stood there in awe of this beautiful scooter as the shiny rails glisten in the sun. At the time having a razor scooter made you cool so this was a big deal. Everyone one was in a trance and our young instincts made us violent. Everyone began fighting over the scooter. After we came to the general consensus we all got in line and waited our turn to use it. It was finally my turn.  As I took my first couple of steps towards to  scooter I hadn’t realized that the fat kid behind me had his own agenda. He pushed me out of the way and as I tried to get up the scooter hit me in the head causing my head to crush into the ground. When I stood up everyone was staring at me weirdly then I looked down and saw blood on the ground that was coming from my busted lip.

Term number two: Tianna McNair is not permitted to talk strangers. Any violation will result in more extreme lecturing if she is not already in danger from the interaction with the stranger. I however forgot about this part of the agreement as people rushed over to help me. I don’t remember crying but I do remember being confused. One teenager boy came over to me and asked,”Do you live around here?” I was trying to process the question that was being presented to me. I mean technically no I did not live around there but my aunt lived on this block. Also I could even remember which house belonged to my family because they all looked the same and I didn’t know how far away I drifted. The boy tried again by asking,” Where is your house?” Again this wasn’t as simple as he thought I was just visiting so was interested in taking me to my actual house or is he wanted to bring me to my aunt’s house. All of my confusion stopped me from forming sentences and before I knew it my tiny finger pointed in the direction in which you had to take in order to get to my actual house which was in southwest Philly while we were all the way in north Philly. I guess the confusion got to him to so he just took me across the street, completely ignoring my directions. When we got there, all of the ladies that were sitting out ran over to me throwing a bunch of questions. I can’t even remember what I said or if I even said anything at all but all I knew was that what was about to happen was even worse than talking to strangers.

Term number three: Tianna McNair is supposed to stay out of trouble by any means necessary. Any violation will result in more trouble and harm. All I could do was think about all the trouble I was going to be in as the group of people from that one house attempted to help me find my family. We all marched around in a large group circling the entire neighborhood but little did they know they were doing more harm than good. We were actually getting farther and farther away from the house. But what I didn’t know was that in that moment my father's intuition kicked in and he organized his own search party to find me. As we were walking up the street my family was walking towards us. I was so happy I couldn't help but run to my mom. One of the ladies that I was with explained the situation to my father.