Branch and Palm Trees Essay Example for Free

Branch and Palm Trees Essay It was raining, I didn’t like rain. In fact, I didn’t like any kind of weather. That was why I only left my house when I had to. I was just heading to my bed so I could relax and finish the book that I was currently reading, it was about†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦wait, I forgot the name†¦..it was something about a girl who volunteered for her little sister to fight to the death†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.wait! It was called The Hunger Games! Then It was all a blackout and I was sound asleep. I woke up to the sound of crashing waves and the taste of salt and sand grains in my mouth. I opened my eyes, and at first I thought I was dreaming. Somehow, after a while, I could tell it wasn’t a dream. It was real. All I could see was blue salt water crashing on the sand shore in front of me. I stood up and touched the water, it felt fairly warm so I could tell I was somewhere besides California (where I lived at the time). I look over the horizon to see only blue skies. This worries me. I am still in my pajamas that are yellow with green palm trees. I turn around and see a fairly sized island with mostly all palm trees packed together into groups. I start walking to the palm trees, my feelings to what has just happened were kind of jumbled and I was confused. I’m halfway to the closest palm tree when I hear the bushes on my left side rustling. It could be my imagination or it could be the ocean breeze. I didn’t know which. To my surprise, it was neither. I push aside the bush only to see a huge lizard lumber out. I shook that off and continued walking towards the palm trees again. I reach the edge and start walking in. The farther I went in the darker it would get because of the dense vegetation. I had nothing else to do, so I continued walking farther and farther in. I tried carving lines into every tree trunk I passed so I could possibly find my way back. Eventually I gave up on that (It was to much work). The sun was going down and now all I was thinking about was where I was going to sleep. I came up with the idea to make a cushion of some kind and then put it up in a stable tree branch. I took the most comfortable looking leaves, stacked them on top of each other and hoped for the best. I woke up in the morning dazed and I could feel the sun rays beaming across the side of my face and my shoulders. The sun is out, but it’s still freezing. I started looking around for food because my stomach was growling, and to my surprise there was a pile of mangos piled neatly at the foot of a tree trunk. At the moment, I wasn’t thinking about how they got there like that, I was thinking about how delicious they looked. I reach over, grab the best looking one I can find, and shove almost half of it in my mouth and I dropped the second half. There was a haggard looking man walking toward me with a knife pointed toward me. At first he was yelling at me saying things, like it took him 3 days to get the mangos. Then he was questioning me, asking, How did you get here? Where are you from? and what do you want? I told him that I didn’t know how I got here, I was from California, and all I wanted was to go home. He told me that if I was hungry he could provide me with some, but very little food. I thought it was better than nothing so I followed him. He stopped in front of a fairly sized hut made out of palm tree branches and bamboo sticks. It sure did look a lot better then the leaf ‘†bed† I made. He pushes aside the seaweed curtain and proceeded to lead me in. There is no kind of furniture, but I am not surprised. I sit down around the fire he had going. He walks back to the fire with a dead, skinned monkey on a stick. Doesn’t look very appetizing but it’s better than nothing. He holds over the fire and slowly turns it until it is done cooking. He rips off a leg and hands it to me. I reach for it reluctantly. Right away he bites down into the monkey. He must have been very hungry, but so am I. I bite down into the thigh and it tastes a lot better than I thought it would. I am alarmed by the sounds of a helicopter. I rush out to see that helicopter landing on the open beach. Once it had landed I ran toward the window and started banging on it. All I wanted to do was return home. After a while of speaking to the men from the helicopter they told me they actually weren’t looking for me but for the haggard man I was with. He had been on that Island for 4 years! Then they tell me that they will only have room for him. They say that they will have to come back for me later. But how much later? Great.

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Asa Philip Randolph was a multi-dimensional man that fit into the categorizes of veteran, civil rights activist, and a intrepid leader that fought for overall labor equality for African American men. Although he was strong in his political stance he also faced the challenges of other prominent figures undermining his proactive methods which in turn deferred his results of acceptance in America. However this did not affect his advocacy for the mistreated and ignored masses. Throughout his adult life he achieved great changes in respect to unionization, work forces and was a voice of the people. Randolph believed in integration and as a result disagreed with the separated beliefs of Black Power advocates and considered violence an unethical and immoral strategy. He also did not see the problem of African American people in America as one that could be solved through isolation because it was seen as the symptom of a social illness, which in a conflict theorist perspective, is caused by an unfairly distributed amount of resources, wealth and power. As a result Randolph's views were shared in a magazine called the MESSENGER, which was founded in 1917, and according to the book A. Philip Randolph and the Struggle for Civil RIghts by Cornelius Bynum, it was considered "the only magazine of scientific radicalism published by Negroes." He co-edited the magazine with Chandler Owen, a fellow socialist who came to be Randolph's closest friend. Each were aware that many did not support their partnership but they disregarded these discriminations because they were confident that society would change with the organization of worker unions. Randolph and Owen outlined the purpose of their socialist publication in an early editorial that d... ...n the Vanguard by Andrew Edmund Kersten, this budget resorted to have the government spend $185 billion over 10 years to fight against poverty, because according to Randolph at the convention floor of the AFL-CIO the labor movement had been the only safe place for ignored, burdened and poor people. It was this ideal that kept his spirit strong through the enduring years when he was the voice for this issue. Asa Philip Randolph’s accomplishments show the immovable strength during his battle for full human rights of African Americans and other people of the nation. Since 1911 Randolph has led the movement for equal human rights within his political advances, was a role model who made something out of nothing and made a name for himself by using his struggle as motivation. He did not take no for an answer but took the initiative to change and make things better.

Christine Jorgensen Biography

Christine Jorgensen Biography Christine Jorgensen  (May 30, 1926 – May 3, 1989) was the first widely known person to have  sex reassignment surgery – in this case,  male to female. She was born  George William Jorgensen, Jr. , the second child of George William Jorgensen Sr. , a carpenter and contractor, and his wife, the former Florence Davis Hansen. She grew up in the Bronx and later described herself as having been a â€Å"frail,  tow-headed, introverted little boy who ran from fistfights and rough-and-tumble games†. She graduated from  Christopher Columbus High School  in 1945 and shortly thereafter was drafted into the  Army. After being discharged from the Army, Jorgensen attended Mohawk College in  Utica, New York, the Progressive School of Photography in  New Haven, Connecticut, and the Manhattan Medical and Dental Assistant School in New York City, New York. Jorgensen briefly worked for  Pathe News. Returning to New York after military service and increasingly concerned over (as one obituary called it) her â€Å"lack of male physical development†, Jorgensen heard about the possibility of sex reassignment surgery, and began taking the female hormone  ethinyl estradiol  on her own. She researched the subject with the help of Dr. Joseph Angelo, a husband of one of Jorgensen's classmates at the Manhattan Medical and Dental Assistant School. Jorgensen intended to go to Sweden, where the only doctors in the world performing this type of surgery at the time were to be found. At a stopover in Copenhagen  to visit relatives, however, Jorgensen met Dr. Christian Hamburger, a Danish endocrinologist and specialist in rehabilitative hormonal therapy. Jorgensen ended up staying in Denmark, and under Dr. Hamburger's direction, was allowed to begin  hormone replacement therapy, eventually undergoing a series of surgeries. According to an obituary: â€Å"With special permission from the Danish Minister of Justice, Jorgensen had his [sic] testicles removed first and his still-undeveloped penis a year later. Several years later Jorgensen obtained a  vaginoplasty, when the procedure became available in the U. S. , under the direction of Dr. Angelo and a medical advisor Harry Benjamin. Jorgensen chose the name Christine in honour of Dr. Hamburger. She became a spokesperson for  transsexual  and  transgender  people. Famous Asked Questions for Women Famous Women and Their Contribution Abby Kelley Foster Year Honored:  2011 Birth:  1811 –  Death:  1887 Born In:  Massachusetts, Died In:  Massachusetts, Achievements:  Humanities Educated In:  Rhode Island Schools Attended:  Providence Friends School Worked In:  Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan During her lifetime, Abby Kelley Foster followed the motto, â€Å"Go where least wanted, for there you are most needed.    A major figure in the national anti-slavery and women’s rights movements, she spent more than twenty years travelling the country as a tireless crusader for social justice and equality for all. Foster was born into a Quaker family in Pelham, Massachusetts in 1811, and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts at a time when society demanded that women be silent, submissive and obedient. Afte r attending boarding school, she held teaching positions in Worcester, Millbury and Lynn, Massachusetts. In Lynn, she joined the Female Anti-Slavery Society, where she became corresponding secretary and later, a national delegate to the first Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women in 1837. The following year, Foster made her first public speech against slavery, and was so well received that she abandoned her teaching career and returned to Millbury. There, she founded the Millbury Anti-Slavery Society and began lecturing for the American Anti-Slavery Society. During the next two decades, Foster served as a lecturer, fundraiser, recruiter and organizer in the fight for abolition and suffrage. In 1850, she helped develop plans for the National Women’s Rights Convention in Massachusetts. There, she gave one of her most well-known speeches, in which she challenged women to demand the responsibilities as well as the privileges of equality, noting â€Å"Bloody feet, sisters, have worn smooth the path by which you come hither. † In 1854, Foster became the chief fundraiser for the American Anti-Slavery Society, and by 1857, she was its general agent. Through the American Anti-Slavery Society, Foster continued to work for the ratification of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. In her later years, once slavery was abolished and the rights of freedmen were guaranteed, Foster focused her activism primarily on women’s rights. She held meetings, arranged lectures, and called for ‘severe language’ in any resolutions that were adopted. In 1868, she was among the organizers of the founding convention of the New England Woman Suffrage Association, the first regional association advocating woman suffrage. Foster’s efforts were among those that helped lay the groundwork for the nineteenth amendment to the U. S. Constitution. Lilly Ledbetter Year Honored:  2011 Birth:  1938 – Born In:  Alabama, Achievements:  Humanities Educated In:  Alabama Schools Attended: Worked In:  Alabama, District of Columbia For more than a decade, Lilly Ledbetter fought to achieve pay equity. It was in Alabama, where Ledbetter was born and raised, that she began a crusade that would eventually lead her all the way to the nation’s capital. In 1979, Ledbetter took a job at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in Gadsen, Alabama. Although she was the only woman in her position as an overnight supervisor, Ledbetter began her career earning the same salary as her male colleagues. By the end of her career, however, Lilly was earning less than any of the men in the same position. Although she signed a contract with her employer that she would not discuss pay rates, just before Ledbetter’s retirement an anonymous individual slipped a note into her mailbox listing the salaries of the men performing the same job. In spite of the fact that Ledbetter had received a Top Performance Award from the company, she discovered that she had been paid considerably less than her male counterparts. Ledbetter filed a formal complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission and later initiated a lawsuit alleging pay discrimination. After filing her complaint with the EEOC, Ledbetter, then in her 60s, was reassigned to such duties as lifting heavy tires. The formal lawsuit claimed pay discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Pay Act of 1963. Although a jury initially awarded her compensation, Goodyear appealed the decision to the United States Supreme Court. In 2007 the Supreme Court ruled on the Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. ase. In a 5-4 decision, the court determined that employers cannot be sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act if the claims are based on decisions made by the employer 180 days ago or more. Due to the fact that Ledbetter’s claim regarding her discriminatory pay was filed outside of that time frame, she was not entitled to receive any monetary award. After that decision, Ledbetter lobbied tir elessly for equal pay for men and women. Her efforts finally proved successful when President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law on January 29, 2009. Ledbetter said of her continuous and persistent efforts, â€Å"I told my pastor when I die; I want him to be able to say at my funeral that I made a difference. † Loretta C. Ford Year Honored:  2011 Birth:  1920 – Born In:  New York, Achievements:  Science Educated In:  New Jersey, Colorado Schools Attended:  Middlesex General Hospital; University of Colorado, School of Nursing, Boulder; University of Colorado, School of Nursing, Denver; University of Colorado, School of Education; Evergreen Institute Worked In:  New Jersey, Colorado, Washington, New York, Japan An internationally renowned nursing leader, Dr. Loretta C. Ford has transformed the profession of nursing and made health care more accessible to the general public. In 1942, Ford received her Diploma in Nursing from Middlesex General Hospital in New Jersey and began her professional career as a staff nurse with the Visiting Nurses’ Association. She went on to serve as a First Lieutenant in the U. S. Army Air Force from 1943-1946. In 1949, Ford received her B. S. from the University of Colorado, School of Nursing, and in 1951, she obtained her M. S. from the same university. From 1948-1958, Dr. Ford held several different roles at the Boulder City County Health Department, and from 1955-1972 she held various teaching positions at the University Of Colorado Schools of Nursing. In 1961, she earned her Ed. D. from the University of Colorado School of Education. In the early 1960s, Dr. Ford discovered that, because of a shortage of primary care physicians in the community, health care for children and families was severely lacking. In 1965, she partnered with Henry K. Silver, a pediatrician at the University of Colorado Medical Center, to create and implement the first pediatric nurse practitioner model and training program. The program combined clinical care and research to teach nurses to factor in the social, psychological, environmental and economic situations of patients when developing care plans. When the program became a national success in 1972, Dr. Ford was recruited to serve as the Founding Dean of the University of Rochester School of Nursing. At the university, Dr. Ford developed and implemented the unification model of nursing. Through the model, clinical practice, education and research were combined to provide nurses with a more holistic education. Dr. Ford is the author of more than 100 publications and has served as a consultant and lecturer to multiple organizations and universities. She holds many honorary doctorate degrees and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Living Legend Award from the American Academy of Nursing and the Gustav O. Lienhard Award from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. Today, it is estimated there are 140,000 practicing nurse practitioners in the United States and close to 9,000 new nurse practitioners are prepared each year at over 325 colleges and universities. Oprah Winfrey Year Honored:  1994 Birth:  1954 – Born In:  Mississippi, United States of America Achievements:  Arts, Business, Philanthropy Educated In:  Tennessee Schools Attended:  Tennessee State University Worked In:  Illinois, Tennessee, Maryland, District of Columbia, California, New York At the heart of everything Oprah Winfrey does, there is a consistent message – that individuals should take personal responsibility for their lives, and to improve the world. Winfrey is the first African-American woman to own her own production company; a talented actress nominated for an Academy Award in her first movie; television's highest-paid entertainer; producer and actress n her own television specials; and the successful host of a syndicated television talk show that reaches 15 million people a day. She does all that she can to eradicate child abuse. As a victim herself, Winfrey knows the damage abuse does to young lives, and she was a major force in the drafting, lobbying and passage of the National Child Protecti on Act, signed into law by President Clinton in 1994. The Act establishes a national registry of child abusers to help employers and those working with children to screen out dangerous people. Winfrey is also a committed philanthropist, providing significant assistance to schools (Morehouse College, Tennessee State University, Chicago Academy of Arts) as well as to the Chicago Public Schools. She also funds battered women's shelters and campaigns to catch child abusers. Billie Holiday Year Honored:  2011 Birth:  1915 –  Death:  1959 Born In:  Maryland, Died In:  New York, Achievements:  Arts Educated In:  Maryland Schools Attended: Worked In:  Maryland, New York, Missouri, California, Illinois, Canada Considered by many to be one of the greatest jazz vocalists of all time, Billie Holiday triumphed over adversity to forever change the genres of jazz and pop music with her unique styling and interpretation. Holiday was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and moved to New York City with her mother at a young age. There, she began work as a maid. However, in 1931, she left that employment to pursue work as a dancer in Harlem nightclubs. At one of those clubs, she was asked to sing. She quickly began singing in many of the Harlem nightclubs and soon established a following of admirers, despite having had no formal musical training. Holiday’s career began to grow, thanks in part to the interest of John Hammond of Columbia Records, who organized her first recording with Benny Goodman in 1933. She debuted at the Apollo Theatre in 1935, and began recording under her own name in 1936. Holiday toured extensively in 1937 and 1938 with the Count Basie and Artie Shaw bands. While on tour, Holiday was often subjected to discrimination. Perhaps Holiday’s most notable collaborations were with legendary saxophonist Lester Young, who gave Holiday her moniker â€Å"Lady Day. Together, they created some of the most important jazz music of all time. Of her groundbreaking vocal style and delivery, Holiday once said, â€Å"I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That's all I know. † As both a vocalist and a songwriter, Holiday penned  God Bless the Child  and  Lady Sings the Blues,  among others. Her interpretation of the anti-lynching poem Strange Fruit  was als o included in the list of Songs of the Century by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for the Arts. Holiday’s autobiography,  Lady Sings the Blues, was written in 1956. She won five Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000 and the Nesuhi Ertugan Jazz Hall of Fame in 2004. Holiday, known for her deeply moving and personal vocals, remains a popular musical legend more than fifty years after her death. In spite of personal obstacles, Holiday inspired many with her vocal gifts and continues to be recognized as a seminal influence on music.

Abortion Essay - 1038 Words

Abortion is one of the most controversial issues in America today. Abortion is the ending of pregnancy before birth. There are approximately 1.5 million abortions every year in this country. Abortion was made legal in the 1970s. However, pro-life activists argue that it is murder. Should the government have the legal power to take away a woman\\s right to make decisions regarding her own body? An abortion results in the death of an embryo or a fetus. Abortion destroys the lives of helpless, innocent children. In many countries abortion is illegal. By aborting these unborn infants, humans are hurting themselves; they are not allowing themselves to meet these new identities and unique personalities. Abortion is very simply wrong. Everyone†¦show more content†¦When humans cannot control their careless sexual drives it leads them to pregnancy. If humans are responsible enough to be sexually active, they should also be responsible to accept consequences, and if those consequences include becoming pregnant and creating a life like no other, then that life should have the chance to live. Whether born or unborn, there should be a bond or relationship between a mother and child. The Vatican teaches that all humans have a right to life, from the moment of conception until the natural moment of death. According to the Catholic church, a person is living when as young as an embryo, which refers to an organism at its early stage of development, through the fetus stage, which is from the end of the eighth week until birth and when considered a baby, until the last second of life before death. It is selfish to abort an unborn child. This child could have been meant to create world peace, make the invention of the century, find a cure for AIDS or other deadly diseases or maybe have children of his or her own. There is no excuse for having an abortion. Pro-choice followers advocate abortion if the child is an outcome of rape, a painful reminder, may be born defected, or if the female is too young. Adoption agencies are found global and are ready to give these unwanted children an opportunity to live a family that wants them and will give them an adequate amount of love. There are many different views on abortion in the UnitedShow MoreRelatedAbortion : Abortion And Abortion998 Words   |  4 PagesAbortion Abortion is defined in several ways all of which stop a pregnancy. There are different ways of abortion, which are spontaneous abortion, surgical abortion, and medical abortion. Abortion has been arguable topic for decades. One can neither believe abortion to be good nor bad. The idea of individuality and human life is not quite the same. Idea of human life has come from conception; simultaneously on the other hand, fertilizer eggs used for in vitro fertilization are also human lives butRead MoreAbortion : Abortion And Abortion Essay921 Words   |  4 PagesPaper: Abortion Laws The topic of abortion is a widely debated and very heated topic in Texas. The Republican party’s platform supports family values and are completely against abortion under any circumstances, including abortifacients. The Democrat party’s platform supports the rights for women to make choices about their own bodies. They support abortifacients and a person’s right to have an abortion. There is also a large percentage of those that are in the middle in that they believe abortion shouldRead MoreAbortion, The, And Abortion998 Words   |  4 PagesIn the United States there are more than a billion abortions performed each year. Since the court case Roe vs Wade in 1973 more than 56 million babies have been murdered in the United States before they had the chance to take their first breath (Snyder, Michael). These statics along with many more show the huge injustice that is happening in the country I call home. Abortion is defined as the removal of an embryo or fetus from the uterus in order to end a pregnancy. It can include any of variousRead MoreAbortion : Abortion And Anti Abortion1624 Words   |  7 Pagesa very large controversy between the ideas about abortion and anti-abortion. Different religious views, beliefs, peoples many different customs and even people of different cultures all have their own preferences and ideas on the take of this political issue. Views against abortion can lead to as much of an impact as a violent/non violent riots outside of an abortion clinics, to something as simple article in the newspaper. The belief on abortion that leads to a lot of the controversy is that inRead MoreAbortion, The, And Abortion Essay1656 Words   |  7 Pages An abortion is when the pregnancy of a women is ended; it is called sometimes Termination of pregnancy. There are two types of abortion. The first type is the spontaneous abortion; it occurs within the first two months. What causes it is frequently unknown yet is probably the results of intra-uterine contamination, or limited attachment in the building unborn child to the interior coating walls in the womb (uterus). Such conditions this unborn child, if the idea advances further, mayRead MoreAbortion, The, And Abortion953 Words   |  4 Pagesdebates that is constantly talked about is abortion. When it comes to abortion, the laws vary depending on the state you live in. Whether people support or are against abortion, few actually know about the abortion process. Have you ever heard of suction aspiration or prostaglandin chemical abortion? Those are two of the various methods that are performed in the different trimesters of pregnancy. According to writer Steven Ertelt of Li feNews.com, Oklahoma’s abortion laws are restrictive compared to otherRead MoreAbortion : Abortion And Abortion1930 Words   |  8 PagesAbortion has been around for quite some time. Laws have been set allowing it and banning it during different periods of time. The procedures that can be done are all very different. There is a medical abortion involving drugs and there are surgical abortion involving a more invasive procedure. There are also different points of view on it. There are those who fully support the termination of a pregnancy and those who are completely against it. There are many factors to consider and very differentRead MoreAbortion And Abortion2038 Words   |  9 PagesMostly seen as a religious issue, abortions are anything but that. Biology and science are the only deciding factors when it comes down to it. Science is the only thing that can prove whether an unborn child is living; no religion can do that. Through modern science and technology, it has been proven and well documented that human life does in fact begin at conception. The scientific evidence also contradicted the court ruling in the Roe v. Wade case, where it was stated that the Court could notRead MoreAbortion : The Fight For Abortion1543 Words   |  7 PagesAlthough abortion was decriminalized in 1973, the fight for abortion rights did not end with Roe v. Wade. Just in the past three years, there have been systematic restrictions on abortion rights sweeping the country sate by state. In 2013, 22 states enacted 70 antiabortion measures, including pre-viability abortion bans, unnecessary doctor and clinic procedures, limits on medicated abortion, and bans on insurance coverage of abortion In 2011, 92 abortion restrictions were enacted, an in 2012, thatRead MoreAbortion : The Issue Of Abortion1212 Words   |  5 PagesThe topic of abortion has been an ongoing debate for many years. According to ProChoice.org, abortion was legal in in the days of the early settlers . At the time that the constitution was adopted abortions were legal. Abortions were openly advertised and performed before the first fetal movement (13-16 weeks from the start of a women’s last period). The concern for abortion started in the late 1800’s when immigrants were coming into the country in large numbers and the fear was that they would produce