Adopted Town

 Melissa Holbrook Pierson’s book, The Place You Love is Gone, she describes what it is like to lose what is known as home.  The chapter entitled “Adopted town”, illustrates the struggles that the author went through in her new town of New Jersey. Moving from a rural area like Akron, Ohio made it difficult to adjust to the more fast paced life in New Jersey. The chapter exposes the difficulties she undertook with the change as well as the new place she called home. She really didn’t like the apartment she lived in but then again who would with how she described it; “what it did have was peculiar gas stove, with an open grille in the inside. This, you learned somewhere around the end of October, was the heat.”  She made it work somehow and got through the tough living conditions.

One quote that really stuck out to me was “Hoboken once more bled into your blood.” To me I took that is whether she wanted it to or not this was her new home and she had to grow to love it. This reminded me of my freshman year at Salem. I didn’t really like my roommates and I knew I had to kind of suck it up and deal with it just like the author did in this chapter. Salem state is now defiantly my adopted town. I live in an apartment now and I have grown to love Salem. I had to get use to a lot of things that my hometown didn’t have. One thing that sticks out the most is the driving here compared to Salem New Hampshire. People do not know how to drive around here what so ever!

Water World

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/543/

The reason I posted this blog is because on Thursday in Biology we watched this video clip. It made me really think about a lot. These poor children have to walk through water every day to do anything, go to school, go to work, or just to have "fun" with their friends. My biology teacher gave us a worksheet to fill out while we watched this video and she wanted us to find 5 examples of innovative responses that people are trying to do to help the people in Bangladesh adapt to the climate change.

            In Bangladesh they are trying to do a lot to help the people of this country but to me it’s not enough. A couple things that stuck out to me were the climate shelters they are building for the families. The climate shelters are basically floating houses for the people of Bangladesh. There are obviously not enough for everyone though so it’s sad to think about the people who don’t get a chance to save their families by living in a climate shelter. One aspect that I thought was great was the cell phones. The people of Bangladesh are sending text messages to Georgia Tech and getting a forecast result from the school, which is awesome so they can kind of know ahead of time about rain or cyclones that are approaching. When they get the text message or warning they can then put of flags and raise them up on a pole so the people can see and try and prepare for what is to come. The best response I think is the floating schools. Students that were not able to go to school before are not able to go to school on a floating shelter. They also can learn to use a computer and help them become more educated for the future.
            Something that really stuck out to me was the environmental scientist stating that if the sea level rises 1 meter (3 feet) 20% of the land will disappear and there will be about 35 million climate refugees. People in Massachusetts flip out if they have an inch of water in there basement I would love to show this clip to someone like that and show them 3 feet or a house that is completely under what and then see what they have to say.
            In class we talk about people losing houses or other things. The people in this country lose everything to a climate change that we could be helping them by doing very small things like unplugging our phone chargers when we are not using them. They are on the “frontline” of this climate change but soon enough it will be us.

So I challenge all of you to think about your house being under water and what you can do to help them and yourself.

MHP: There’s a qualitative difference in the type of change that’s occurring now. It’s not organic growth, what we’re seeing. We’re seeing a shift—or maybe the fruits of capitalism run amok—where basically anything and everything is for sale. It doesn’t need to benefit anybody else other than the developer. He’s not accountable to anybody. He can go and wreck a landscape that belongs to all of us. But it’s meaningful to all of us, as well as to the rest of nature. And he can walk away from it. He can do that and walk away. We’ve created a system where this is perfectly OK to do—and in fact, it’s lauded, even.

She makes a very good point. People are not considering anything else but themselves now-a-days. People only care about themselves and what will benefit them. If selling something or wrecking something that would really help everyone out in the end doesnt matter anymore if it is beneficial for one person. So if tearing down a neighborhood to build a shopping mall is beneficial for that one person, people will do it. I dont think that is fair at all for anyone.

MHP: If we didn’t love things, then we couldn’t feel their loss.

Also a very good point she makes. If you have no real connection with something and someone takes it away from you then it shouldnt affect you in the long run. But, that doesnt mean people should stop caring about things because they know they will be lost at some point which i feel alot of people are doing today too. People know things will be taken away from them or lost so they dont care even though they should.

MHP: I know! When I go home to suburban Ohio, I see these big trucks parked in front of people’s houses that say ChemLawn. Who wants a ChemLawn? I guess there are people out there who actually want a ChemLawn. This is what makes me—I mean, I know I’m out of step with the rest of America. I feel that all the time. I felt that during the last election. We were all on the floor screaming in agony.

I dont know what a ChemLawn is so i asked my friend and he said he sees them everywhere too. His comment was "yea they have a dalmation of the truck, i see them everywhere!" I still dont get why she would add this in her interview it doesnt really make sense.

In this interview it explains alot and explains how she felt when she wrote her books. I thought it was very intersting reading this and gives me a better sense on what she fealt and meant in alot of her writing. I also now know that nostalgia is definiatly not a bad thing. In fact it is a very good thing in helping you cope with things.