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Train
—Calling All Angels
I want a reason for the way things have to be
Habitat for Humanity.
So this is kinda cool, I’m on my mission trip here in Pensacola, Florida, and I’m learning a lot. This is my first time with Habitat for Humanity and it’s really interesting. This post will be fairly brief because we have a lot to do! Yesterday was Monday, our first day, we started at 8 and went till 2:30. We got a TON done yesterday, we got all of the walls up and all the framing done. Then today we returned again at 8 and we did more hammering nails for a few hours and then we got all the roofing materials. We put together most of the roof today but got a little behind schedule because the roofing stuff arrived so late. That was pretty much all we did today and yesterday but we have come a long way and it’s really exciting! I bet we’ll have a pretty decent portion of the house done before we leave here!
Our Cancer Year is not particularly uplifting or entertaining. Therefore, what value does it hold for us, if any? Put another way, as a rhetorical text, does it help us do, think, or feel anything?
This is kind of a tough subject for me but I would like to blog about it anyway. When we first started reading this text I was kind of apathetic toward it. I’ve seen cancer in lots of different ways, and it’s definitely hard every time but I do feel like cancer has in some way affected a lot of people. However, two weeks ago came the shocking news that a good friend of my family and someone I have known for a long time passed away after a long battle with the same kind of lymphoma that Harvey has. At that point, reading this book kind of struck a little too close to home. I know Harvey eventually dies too and it’s hard to read about all the things that were probably all too similar with our family friend’s life and struggle with cancer.
Even though this text makes me struggle a bit personally, I can see that it holds value in that way specifically. What this text can do is strike a chord in people who have seen someone else go through that same struggle, or at least make cancer a little more relatable. This traces back to what we discussed in class a few weeks ago, how cancer is the elephant in the room, and no one really knows how to react to it. It’s not your battle but you want to show support. Therefore, I think that as a rhetorical text, its purpose is to make the reader think, feel, and want to support anyone who is struggling with anything in their life, particularly cancer but perhaps in any other area of struggle as well.
Habitat for Humanity
This Spring Break I will be participating in a mission trip through my church, St. Thomas Aquinas, and we will be traveling down to Pensacola, Florida to help build a house through Habitat for Humanity. Pensacola was hit hard and devastated by Hurricane Ivan a few years ago, but then shortly after that Hurricane Katrina hit and all the attention was directed toward New Orleans. That being said, Pensacola is still trying hard to recover from Ivan and so we are going down to help out. Habitat for Humanity builds houses for people in great need. Extensive background checks are done on these families and they are deemed well-deserving after these checks. We will be starting from scratch and building from 8 to 4 every day of that week. We most likely will not completely finish the house by the time we leave but another group will come in that next week and continue working until it is finished. I’ve gotten involved in this through my church, but I’ve always wanted to go on a mission trip and help people with my free time. I really feel as though building a house for someone definitely affects someone’s health and wellness of their overall life. I’m really looking forward to volunteering through this trip.
I had a hard time choosing a song for this assignment because I have a lot of favorite songs from several genres that make me feel lots of different ways. In the end I decided on this song, This Is The New Year by Ian Axel. Ian Axel is not very well known- he only plays small shows in New York City and small venues. I love this song for so many different reasons, but mainly because I think it’s the song that sums up my personality the most. I love the mood, the piano, the beat, the drums, the video, the friends, the lyrics, the happiness. It makes me smile every time I listen to it. It reminds me that if there’s every something in my life that needs a change, every day is a new year to make that change.
My favorite line is “be not afraid of who you really are.” My personality is so solid to me and my identity and I feel like this song not only reminds me to be who I am but that I will always be able to find people who appreciate that.
Things That I’ve Done:
Volunteering:
1. Contacted by email the Riggs Community Center. Got an email back the next day that said they had a spot available from 12-3 on the first Wednesday of every month. I can’t do that, I have Stats at 2:30.
2. Contacted two nursing homes, Tippecanoe Villa and Cumberland Point via emails given to me at BVN. Got no response.
3. Called Cumberland Point, was told that my contact would be out of town for a few weeks and there was no one else I could talk to.
4. Looked up other emails on the nursing homes’ websites and sent emails to them too, got no response.
Other things I do, volunteer wise:
Teach religious education at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church at Purdue for 75 minutes every Sunday.
Also, I will be going on a mission trip to Pensacola, Florida over spring break to help build a house through Habitat for Humanity.
First Post.
It’s weird to have a first post again. I’ve had my other blog for a while so it’s strange to start completely over. I’m excited about this english assignment though. I will dedicate my first post to the topic I’m interested in for my health and wellness topic: vaccines. As of now I don’t have too much information on them but I did find some interesting articles online from the Chicago Tribune and the NYTimes about new vaccines and how important prevention is. I’m really just interested in pharmaceutical research so maybe my interests will take a different turn as this course progresses but we’ll see :o)
