Congrats to Natalie Portman and Colin Firth.

I've learned a lot this past week.
I learned that a community can do great things in short amounts of time.
On Wednesday, we held a candlelight vigil for the two boys who died. It was one of the most beautiful things i've ever seen. Over a thousand people came to celebrate their lives.
One of the boys' family needed help paying for a funeral and burial expenses. People at school raised over 11,000.
It's nice to know that even in the face of unspeakable tragedy, everyone pulls together like that. There was so much love all over.
Another thing was the power of empathy.
I didn't know the boys too well, and neither did a lot of people.
Even so, looking at their memorials in the quad was heartbreaking.
sitting next to their prom dates in class was awful.
At the same time, it was empathy for others that led to the vigil and the funeral and the overwhelming sense of community this past week. For that I am grateful.

Rachel, I'm very sorry about what is happening in your school. I know this must be a very difficult time in your community and I wish you all the best in this time.

Ellen, I can totally relate to your library/librarian story! If you have a study, the library at our school is not hard to use, however if you need to use it before or afterschool it's a nightmare. Our head librarian seems to hate sentient life. Our computers don't log you in for twenty plus minutes, so if you need to print a paper before class expect to be late by about twenty minutes before the computer can complete the complicated tasks of logging on, connecting to the internet, logging into my email and opening the document, which for some reason, the computer feels it must install Microsoft word Every. Single. Time! I really hope my printer doesn't break because with my first period teacher if you walk into class five minutes late, your paper is late. Also if you aren't in class you have to email the paper by 8:10 am. This just makes me uneasy like I understand the reasoning here, but if I'm really violently puking or deal with a family emergency I'm not going to stop and suddenly go, "Let me email Franklin my paper now!" I'm wondering what if I am in the emergency room or something like that and can't email the paper until like the next day, is he going to bring down his overlording grade power and stamp late on the paper any way? Really I just hope I don't run into that situation.

This week is a fairly good week for me because I am off on February break. This brings back a lot of nostalgia because last year's February break was spent going through all the old vlogbrothers videos. However this vacation I am doing something significantly less fun, which is cleaning my room. It's been a disaster since practically last summer and I'm trying to finally get it in working order. I'm tantilizingly close and am trying to finish before I sleep even if that means being up til four in the morning. My theory is that it is not a proper vacation if I don't wack out my sleep schedule!

Other awesome thing I'm doing this weekend is I'm working at the Real Food Summit in Boston:

My friend Muller is in that video and I only found that just now when I was Googling for a link to show you guys (like this one) but basically 300-500 people will be there and I'm going to do some workshops and possible a skit in front of all those people and it's going to be awesome!
Anyhoo, I hope everyone's week gets even better tomorrow, because I think we can always use a little more awesome.
-Emily

Death And Dying

I think today's post is going to be short. Just a warning.

Two boys at school died Saturday. They drowned.
it's so awful. They were two of the nicest people in the school.
They were best friends. I never saw one without the other.
Today at school was so awful. The entire place was just in shock.

Sorry I didn't post yesterday. I wasn't feeling like being on the computer much.

Playlist Tuesday

I love how my top25 most played on iTunes is actually a really accurate representation of what music I have on my iPod: Glee, musicals, youtube/internet artists, JPop... and Maggie Stiefvater.

Though I'm not sure why the first two songs have so many more listens than the others LOL. Almost twice as much as the third song.

I don't really know what this says about me as a person, though. Uh... that I listen to anything with great lyrics and a catchy beat?

I see you drivin' round town with the guy I love and I'm like... forget you! (Oo--oo-ooh!)

SHUFFLE!

Don't unplug me or or or just shut me out, please just love me with with your steel heart!

And that was a "I don't know what to blog about Tuesday" with Sandy! So. Uhm. Uh. WHAT KIND OF MUSIC DO YOU GUYS LIKE? Does it look like my playlist XP?

See you guys next week!

*Ding Ding!* Debate Time!

Update: My grandmother is doing better but she's still in the hospital while they try and find a medicine that will help with her dizziness, however we hope to have her home soon.

So topic of the day: Voting

In class right now we're studying the Civil Rights movement, today's planned discussion revolved around some of the ways voting was limited like the poll tax and literacy tests in order to vote. The talk started to morph into what if we had some sort of test like that for today's elections. One very vocal kid in our class was saying that we have to get rid of arbitrary votes and there should be some sort of test to see if you understand what is going on in the election. We had a fairly heated debate for the rest of class which boiled down to this: If you are an idiot you shouldn't be able to vote. My side of this is that everyone should be allowed to vote, regardless of your intelligence or knowledge of the issues.

I've been tossing these questions and debates around in my head all day, I knew that straight from the beginning something made me distinctly uncomfortable about the argument. I know that nothing like this was likely to happen and that our voting system isn't going to change but there was still something uncomfortable about the whole thing. What I realized is that I was seeing the beginnings of discrimination in my classroom. We've been talking about racism all week in class and how we're all trying not to have this preconceived ideas about people yet still do. We've talked about how we're always working to get rid of these biases. However today I saw a classroom full of elitists who thought that they knew better and that this was how things should be run. I saw how racism and prejudice could get started.

I don't know if you guys are familiar with the concept of group think. If you're not, it's basically how ideas spread through a group. There are a few different ways it works like during the witch trials when people would really and truly believe that someone was a witch because so-and-so had seen them do such-and-such soon everyone is convinced of the validity of the statement. It made me squirm to be in class today because in some ways that is what was going on. It seems perfectly sensible that we shouldn't have arbitrary votes if we want a valid election, however when you think about it, what counts as arbitrary? How do you test for that? By the end of class our teacher was saying to everyone, "You're an idiot, you can't vote!" I don't think it is possible for anyone to define what qualifies you to vote, beyond your age. Intelligence, race, religion, hair color and shoe size should not limit the democratic process; everyone should be able to vote.

I truly hope that history is not doomed to repeat itself and that we are making more progress in eliminating prejudice rather than creating it.

DFTBA

*somersaults in*

Emily, I wish you and your family luck. I am so sorry to hear about that.


I suppose my thoughts don't matter post Valentines Day, but here I go. I agree with Ellen and Rachel. A lot of my friends were bashing V-day, but I think it's a pretty harmless day. It's marketing/media that makes it seem like a couples only event. When really, it's just a day to spread more love, love, love.

Today was the Economics Fair! Where my partner and I debuted our thingrings. They sold out in the first ten minutes of the fair, which was TOTALLY AWESOME! There were a couple of people who came by after it sold out frowning that they missed out. The only downside is that we could've charged so much more for them if we'd known they'd be so popular! Even so, we ended up with a $71 profit, so I guess that wasn't too bad :D !

Now I have the Fine Arts Festival to look forward to! Auditions were rescheduled, so I'm having them tomorrow... which means I should really be preparing now! My posts will probably become shorter and shorter as the day comes nearer and nearer...

Hope you guys have an awesome week!

The Elephant In the Room

These days just keep coming faster and faster. Life is so crazy right now. A little weird too, actually. Lots of drama at school. Upset friends and such. It's somewhat upsetting.
Good news! My team won our first two ever mock trial matches.
Other than that, there's not a whole lot of news to report.
Steelers lost the super bowl. WOO! Actually, I don't really care all that much.
What's that you say?
Am I forgetting something?
OH! Valentine's day! Of course! I hope it was wonderful for everyone! It's my mom's favorite small holiday, so this morning I got up early and made her and my dad breakfast and picked them flowers. It was cute.
Valentine's day is sort of a big deal at school. Everybody gives each other roses and such. I might have liked that, but I'm sort of newly single. So it was a little odd. Oh well. Footloose and fancy free is always best, in my opinion.
Valentine's day isn't just couple love though. It's mothers and fathers and mailmen and best friends and teachers and random cashiers at the supermarket love. That's why I like valentine's day. Even when I'm single, it's nice to know everybody loves each other.

With that, I have 25 pages of Fast Food Nation to read in a half hour. Night everybody!